08.25.11_Edamame Burgers

Last Monday, Food Network's Healthy Eats tweeted out a recipe for Edamame Burgers for #MeatlessMonday. I LOVE edamame so I looked at the recipe and thought it would be a fun Asian twist on the veggie burger. I also had not made any veggie burgers from scratch so I thought this would be a good recipe to try.

Looking through the recipe there were several ingredients that I had not worked with and quite frankly did not even know exactly what they were, aka millet and mirin. I assumed these things would be in the Asian section of the grocery store and if not, then I would figure it out. When we got to the international aisle we came across all the different Asian sauces and saw rice vinegars seasoned with mirin but not just mirin alone. I had rice wine vinegar at home so we decided not to buy any. As for the millet, we had Googled what it was but really had no idea where it would be in the store. I found one website that said a lot of organic grocery stores would have it in their bulk food section so I decided that Whole Foods would be the best place for this. I ended up finding millet flour but did not buy that either since it cost $6 for a bag and I only needed 1/4 of a cup and assumed I could use all-purpose flour.
Turns out, I was wrong about both of these things. While the rice wine vinegar is mirin seasoned, it is different from just mirin which is a rice wine, similar to sake. As for the millet, its actually a seed that you can cook, so I'm glad I did not buy the flour because that would have been completely wrong and a waste of money. Moral of the story, if there are ingredients you don't know, research them BEFORE you go to the store, not during or after. Just saying.

The patties before being sauteed.

On to the recipe. Since I did not have two of the correct ingredients I had to improvise. After reading how to cook the mirin and looking at pictures of what it looked like after being cooked, I decided to use couscous. It was something I had in the house and while it would not have the same flavor profile, I figured it would at least do the trick and we honestly wouldn't know the difference. I ended up using the rice wine vinegar since it was all I had and I knew it would still add some Asian flavor to the dish. Other than having to figure out what to do for those two things, everything was very straight forward and simple. I cut the recipe in half per usual since I did not need eight edamame burgers. The patties were easy to form and I let them set in the fridge for about 10 minutes so they would not fall apart when cooking them. I actually sauteed the burgers in a pan with a little oil rather than in the broiler  because I store all my pots and pans in my broiler and did not want to have to take them out. I was surprised how easily the burgers flipped and that they did not stick at all which was a pleasant surprise.

We served the burgers on toasted Pepperidge Farm Deli Flats rather than naan like the recipe recommended. I also topped my burger with a Kikkoman Terryaki Glaze that I love to add an extra layer of flavor. We served the burgers with vegetable pot-stickers we got at the store. My favorite part of ordering pot-stickers from a restaurant is the sauce that comes with it. These store bought ones did not come with any sauce so I decided I would make it rather than serve them with soy sauce. I found a recipe online and I had all the ingredients in the apartment already (except the scallion) so I quickly made this sauce. It was so good and tasted just like the one you get from any restaurant. Definitely a great addition to the pot-stickers. Also, we were surprised to learn that there was tofu in the vegetable pot-stickers we bought. I saw something white when I cut it in half and thought it might be cauliflower but after looking at the ingredients list found out it was tofu. I never would have guessed they would put tofu into vegetable dumplings. Fascinating.