I just couldn’t do it any longer. I couldn’t pretend that my meal didn’t have a price. I had to stop eating meat. I hadn’t been a hippie, hell I was the kind of girl who made fun of vegetarians. I loved meat. I loved cooking with meat. There was something magical about the flexibility of proteins and the transformation that takes place when a tough hunk of flesh becomes fork-tender. Yet, here I was, ready to put down the fork and push that steak away. Oh, god, I’d be the one who says: “No thanks, I don’t eat bacon” and “Does this have meat in it? Are you sure?”

So Long and Thanks for all the Meat!

In the preceding months you see, I’d adopted a dog, Emily.

She soon became the love of my life and light to my days. I’d never connected emotionally with an animal. We’d had pets growing up, but they were hound dogs and outside cats. But now, with my girlfriends popping out babies left and right, I felt this downright maternal surge of love. I looked into her big brown eyes and stared into a thing with life and a soul.

Yet she was ‘just an animal’. In some cultures, she’d be considered quite tasty. That thought horrified me and planted a seed deep in my heart. It didn’t take long for the cognitive dissonance to begin to be too much to bear. After gazing into her little face for hours and hours I realized how much she looked like a little lamb. Then on a drive through the country I stopped in a field to watch a baby cow wander close. In that moment I noticed that it had eyelashes just like Emily’s.

I’m not saying any of this to convert you! This is a profoundly personal choice that everyone has to make. We evolved as omnivores, I know the science. I try never to judge others. In fact, I still cook meat dishes for friends and loved ones, I just can’t partake.

There is one dish in my arsenal that I’ve found even the most die-hard carnivore will ask for seconds and thirds and the recipe to take home!

The Meat of my Post!

I love burgers. I love them so much. However I hate the vegetarian burgers you buy at the grocery. Those frozen brown pucks, hard, uniform, or worse… full of beans! The ones at restaurants, even restaurants that ‘make their own’ aren’t much better! They are dry and crumbly! The best vegetarian restaurant in Santa Cruz still has a burger that is miles behind this masterpiece.

The burgers I make are moist, tender, juicy, and will make any carnivore’s stomach start to growl.

Drooling yet? Okay I’ll share my secret.

Carnivore-Bait Veggie Burgers

This recipe is a tad loosy-goosy. It is highly dependent on what kind of a burger you like. BBQ sauce? Sure throw that in there! Love tons of garlic? YEAH! Hate Onions? No problem. I usually make a batch at a time and freeze the extra! The four components of this recipe are the ‘meat’, the wet ingredients, the dry ingredients, and the flavor-boosting ingredients!

This recipe will make 3 good sized patties or 4 more modest ones.

Ingredients:

The “Meat”

1 pkg Gardein Home Style Beefless Tips

1/2 pkg Lightlife “Smart Bacon”

1/4 pkg Lightlife “Smart Ground” : Original Crumbles

1/4 White or Yellow Onion (diced)

The Wet

1 egg

1 tsp Vegetarian Steak or Worshtechershire sauce

Optional: BBQ Sauce!

The Dry

2 tbs Yellow Cornmeal

2 tbs White Flour

Optional: Oatmeal!

The Flavor!

Garlic Powder

Garlic Paste

Onion Powder

Black Pepper

Spice Mix (I have a smokey maple, a spicy chipotle, and an Italian spice blend that I’ll use according to what I feel like!) I don’t find the recipie needs more salt.

The sky’s the limit here!

Prepare the Patties!

Thaw the Gardein Beefless Tips or if you are in hurry put them on a stove and let them brown a little. Don’t cook them entirely, just thaw them thoroughly.

Chop your onion.

Dice your fake-bacon!

Crumble those crumbles!

Add your dry ingredients, and give them a stir to evenly coat everything in bowl in flour.

Your Beefless tips should be thawed by now, I smush mine with the back of a spatula and rough them up a little. You don’t want to dice them entirely because we’re shooting for a moist and non-uniform consistency!

Add those smushed tips to the bowl

Add your wet ingredients

Oops, that’s for me.

There isn’t really a good way to mix this together without using your hands, so quaff your whisky and dig in.

Form the mixture into patty shapes. Mine start rather round and get squashed down a little as they cook.

I had the burgers fight over which one got consumed and put the losers (winners?) in the freezer for later!

Heat your patties in an oiled pan over medium heat. They will try to fall apart on you, this is okay. Heat one side without flipping it over for a few minutes.

Steel your nerves with more whiskey and flip that sucker over. It will probably fall apart on you again! It’s okay… push it back together with the back of a fork or your spatula and give it a few minutes before piling on some cheese!

Although cheese isn’t technically an ingredient in the burger I do find it useful to keep everything together.

You are on your own after this! Dress your burger as you see fit and be amazed. However you do it, you’ll find the patty moist, complexly textured, and meaty! There is nothing hippie about these burgers!