Chickpea Burgers With Tzatziki And Hot Sauce

Happy Valborg! Today is Valborgsmassoafton, an old pagan tradition, and in Sweden, people celebrate with bonfires, singing, and dinner parties. The fires are to scare off witches and evil spirits, the songs are all about saying goodbye to winter and welcoming spring, and the dinner parties… well, they’re what dinner parties always are – hanging out with friends while enjoying delicious food and drinks.

Traditional Valborg menus often include salmon, roe, potatoes in some form, and a hot beverage (it’s usually freezing still this time of year in Sweden and after spending hours outside looking at that fire, you need something warm). Now, I don’t like any of those dishes (except for the hot beverage), so I am going to make my take on falafel – chickpea burgers – instead.

I have loved falafel ever since I bought my first one at a little hole-in-the-wall place in Aix-en-Provence about 20 years ago. The crunchiness, the creaminess, the garlic… yum! What I don’t love, however, is the intense heartburn I get from the deep fried ones, so I decided to try to invent a more digestion-friendly version.

After a few trial and errors, I came up with this super-easy recipe. I think they are delicious, and if you don’t like tzatziki, or prefer a vegan diet, you can eat them with any condiment of your choice. My husband can’t stand yogurt, so he puts Dijon mustard and ketchup on his.

Just a note up front: you will need a food processor for this (there may be a way to make them without one, but I don’t know what that would be). I bought my first one a few years ago, and I love it! How did I manage for so many years without one?

This recipe makes around 10 burgers, and we usually eat 3-4 each, so I guess it’s enough for 3 people, or 2 with leftovers for lunch. For a larger crowd, I would make this same amount in batches and transfer to a bigger bowl before shaping the burgers. One batch is pretty much all my (14-cup) food processor has room for.

For 10 burgers, you will need:
½ cup of uncooked bulgur
1 cup of water
1 tsp salt

1 can of chickpeas (we use Eden Organics – no BPA)
1 medium-sized yellow onion (if it’s too big, the burgers get too loose and watery)
4 cloves of garlic
¼ – ½ cup of panko bread crumbs
1 tbs olive oil (+ more for the cookie sheet and brushing)
1 ½ tbs white wine vinegar
½ tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tbs dried cilantro (use fresh if you don’t’ like dried)
salt (lots!)

For the Tzatziki:
1 (7 oz) container of Fage 2% Greek yogurt (you can use full fat if you want)
½ seedless (a.k.a. European or English) cucumber
1 garlic clove
salt

Other stuff for assembling the burgers:
Pita bread (we use whole wheat)
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Hot sauce (we love Cholula)

1. Start with the tzatziki. Grate the cucumber on the largest side of your grater, put it in a bowl, salt liberally and cover it. Let sit in room temperature for about 30 minutes. This is to draw some of the water out of the cucumber so that the Tzatziki doesn’t get too wet.

2. Next up is the bulgur. Bring the water to a boil, stir in the salt and bulgur, cover and remove from heat. Let sit for at least 25 minutes.

3. Once the cucumber has sat for 30 min, drain off as much of the water as you can (I sometimes squeeze it in a paper towel). Stir in the entire container of yogurt (or less if you want it more on the “cucumbery” side), press in the garlic clove and salt to taste. Stir again, cover and put in the fridge for now.

4. Time to throw everything in the food processor! Cut up the onion in smaller pieces (I like to put the onion on the bottom to make sure no large pieces end up in the burgers), rinse and add the chickpeas, grate or press in the garlic cloves, add the bulgur, all the spices, oil and vinegar, salt (I probably put in a tablespoon of salt in these, they need lots of it) and last but not least, the breadcrumbs. Start with ¼ of a cup and add more if needed. Run the food processor until everything is nicely blended. If it looks very runny, add some more breadcrumbs. It should be moist and somewhat loose, but not runny.

5. Let sit for 15 minutes.

6. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Oil a cookie sheet lightly. Scoop up a heaping tablespoon (regular, not one for measuring) of the mixture and form it into a burger. Mine are roughly ½” thick and 3″ in diameter (I like lots of crunchy surface). Place on the cookie sheet. Continue until you’re out of mixture. Brush each with some olive oil.

7. Bake in the middle of oven for a total of 40 minutes, turning them once after 20 minutes. I shuffle them around on the cookie sheet too when I’m turning them, since my oven bakes a bit unevenly.

8. While they’re baking after you turned them, prepare the other stuff. Separate the lettuce leaves and rinse them. I leave them whole, but if you want them shredded, prepare them that way. Slice the tomato into thin slices. Take the tzatziki out of the fridge and open the hot sauce.

9. Once the burgers are ready, take them out of the oven and assemble the sandwiches. Tear a pita bread in half, put in a leaf of lettuce, a few slices of tomato, then one (or two) burgers. Top that with a generous serving of the tzatziki and as much as you want of the hot sauce. Make sure you have lots of napkins or paper towels close by and start eating!

I hope you enjoy these as much as we do, and if you try this recipe, I would love to hear what you thought.

For more chickpea recipes, also see my Chickpea salad and Chickpea dip posts.