close

SIMMER + SAUCE

Chickpea Veggie Burger With Sriracha Mayo

It’s no secret, I’ve blogged about my love for a great veggie burger before. But this time, it’s different. This is my chickpea veggie burger with sriracha mayo and it’s my new favorite. And although it sounds shocking, this meatless burger is a great quick meal option. Meatless burger recipes are often labor-intensive. But that’s because they are trying to create the texture of meat, something that is very tricky to do. This is not my angle here. My chickpea veggie burger is a healthy, flavorful, vegetarian alternative, that you can make quickly. All you need to make it is a food processor.

chickpea veggie burger

Who Invented Veggie Burgers

Gregory Sams remembers when he first came up with the idea of an all-vegetable “burger“. The London-based natural food restaurant owner called his product the “VegeBurger” when it first hit the market in 1982.  The word “Vege” or what Americans now know as “veggie,” was a relatively new thing in the 80’s, and in fact, it didn’t enter the lexicon until the late ’70s. The term “veggie burgers” was cited in the Camden (AR) News in 1976, but that referred to a hamburger with vegetables on top.

But before Sam began selling his product commercially, he and his brother had already been promoting a vegetarian diet in the United Kingdom. Although vegetarianism has a history that dates back to ancient Egypt, in the late ’60s a meat-less diet was uncommon in the UK.  In the United States, vegetarianism wasn’t considered trendy until about 1971 when Frances Moore Lappé’s bestseller Diet for a Small Planet was published.

chickpea veggie burger

Macrobiotic Restaurants

By the late ’60s, Sams opened SEED, a macrobiotic restaurant in London. Its menu included rice, veggies, seaweed, unleavened bread, miso, and some seed ingredients. Although this holistic approach to food is believed to have originated in Japan, macrobiotic restaurants, like SEED, didn’t become popular in Europe until the latter half of the ’70s.

Sams invented his first meatless patty at SEED. That first veggie burger had a base of seitan and was flavored with tamari, aduki beans, and oat flakes. Sam’s later VegeBurger was created to save his and his brother’s company, The Harmony Food Brand. It took six months to mix different quantities of four main ingredients (wheat gluten, sesame, soy, and oats) to create just the right texture.

chickpea veggie burger

The VegeBurger was the first of many meatless patties entering the market at the time. Probably, similar versions of Sams’s VegeBurger were already appearing in restaurants predating his business.  But the VegeBurger was the first to reach the commercial, natural foods market, hence its tremendous success.

I’m not a vegetarian, (I tied it out at one point in college) but I make lots of vegetarian meals and love good meatless alternatives. So this burger was a fun project for me and my whole family seems happy.

About the Author

Andrea Potischman

I am a professionally trained NYC chef turned CA mom and food blogger. I post about real food, with doable ingredient lists that are family friendly.

2 thoughts on "Chickpea Veggie Burger With Sriracha Mayo"

  1. Avatar photo Sara Leslie says:

    Just made this for dinner. They are delicious! The pepper and garlic gives just the right kick. And they are very easy…you could cook potato ahead of time if needed. I left out red pepper b/c my family doesn’t like it. Not as pretty but just as tasty.

    1. So love hearing this Sara. You are very loyal to Simmer + Sauce!!!! Keep on cooking.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Comment Policy

Simmer + Sauce reserves the right to remove or restrict comments that do not contribute constructively to the topic conversation, contain profanity or offensive language, personal attacks, or seek to promote a personal or unrelated business. Any post found to be in violation of any of these guidelines will be modified or removed without warning. When making a comment on my blog, you grant Simmer + Sauce permission to reproduce your content to our discretion, an example being for a possible endorsement or media kit purposes. If you don’t want your comment to be used for such purposes, please explicitly state this within the body of your comment. If you find evidence of copyright infringement in the comments of simmerandsauce.com, contact me and I will remove that in question promptly.