You’ve figured out by now that I love burgers, right? The fantastic thing about making plant-based burgers is that you can just mash up whatever grains or legumes you happen to have cooked with some roasted vegetables, herbs and spices, roll them into balls, bake them, and voilá – vegie burgers!

I happened to have some baked beetroot in the fridge that I wanted to use up. Couscous takes so little time to prepare that by the time it was fluffed and ready to go, all the other ingredients that I needed were prepped.

Burger recipes often used beaten egg as a binding agent; ground linseed takes the place of egg in this recipe, adding fibre and omega 3 fats as well as helping stick the other ingredients together.

Feel free to use any fresh or dried herbs and spices that you enjoy.

Ingredients:

1 cup wholemeal couscous
1 cup vegetable stock, or liquid saved from steaming vegetables
w cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
2 medium beetroot, baked – just bake them whole in the skin at 200°C until they yield easily when squeezed, let them cool, then slip off the skins
2 tbsp ground linseed
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C. Line a baking sheet with a silicon baking mat or baking paper.

Bring stock or cooking liquid to the boil. Turn off heat, stir in couscous, cover and leave to absorb liquid for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

Place prepared couscous in a food processor, add remaining ingredients and pulse until well combined but not homogenised.

Shape into 8 balls. Flatten into patties on prepared baking sheet.

Bake for 15 minutes, then flip and bake for another 15 minutes.