I decided to call this recipe the Food Processor burger because the only utensil I used in making these was my food processor and a paring knife.  I had a lot of fresh veggies in the refrigerator that I needed to use, and thought it would be best to incorporate them all into a burger.

Ingredients

• 8 mushrooms, chopped
• 1 carrot, shredded
• 1 zucchini, shredded
• 1/4 tsp dry mustard
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• chili pepper and salt to taste
• 1 block extra firm tofu, drained well
• 1/4 cup pepitas
• 1/4 cup walnuts
• 1/3 cup chick pea flour
• 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
• 8 oz fresh spinach
• 1/2 cup oats (or more if your mixture is too wet)

1. I cooked the vegetables down until all the water was released and seasoned the veggies.
   
2. While these veggies are cooking, drain the tofu well and puree it with the pepitas (pumpkin seeds), walnuts, chick pea flour, nutritional yeast and spinach. If I had extra time, I would have mixed the veggie mixture with the tofu mix by hand, but I was short on time, so I mixed in the cooked veggies in the food processor.
3. To dry out the mixture, add oats (you may need to add more if your mixture is too wet).
4. When shaping the patties, rub a bit of olive oil on the insides of your hands to prevent the mixture from sticking and then form the patties.  I tried a few different cooking methods – stovetop in a frying pan, in my microwave convection oven (that has a microwave safe nonstick pan) at 400F for 20 minutes and in the oven in a muffin pan for 30 minutes at 350F. All methods left the insides of the patties quite moist while the outsides had just the right level of browning.  The patties in the muffin pan will work great as “meatballs” with my tomato sauce from the weekend!

The recipe yielded about 18 veggie burgers which will come in handy with my busy schedule this week.

Next time, I’ll definitely mix the final ingredients by hand to give the burgers more texture, but other than that, this recipe was definitely worth sharing!