Chickpea, Coconut, and Cilantro Burgers

Hello all. I am back to writing a new blog entry again. I had hopes of writing up several recipes from the summer, but plans don't always work out. One thing that I did do this summer was to go to a food festival in Cardiff, Wales. It was a fun day of trying food samples, attending cooking demos, and exploring the Cardiff Bay Area. There were many food booths set up to sell food to the masses of people there. Early in the day, I saw one booth that intrigued me, a booth from Greta's Wholefoodies.

I had a Curried Chickpea, Coconut, and Coriander Burger. It was so flavorful and delicious. I had never had a sandwich quite like it before. Later in the day, I wanted to get something else to eat. I had so many places to choose from, but I decided to go back for another one of these burgers. Ever since I have been home, I have wanted to recreate one of these burgers myself. This past weekend, I had a chance to experiment and was very happy how the result turned out. I see that Greta's website has a list of ingredients for their burgers. However, I was very happy that I tried to recreate it without seeing what their ingredients were.

So enjoy this great vegetarian sandwich.

Burger Ingredients

15 1/2 ounce can of chick peas
1/2 onion, small dice
1/3 cup carrot, small dice
1/2 cup coconut
1 tablespoon jalapeno, finely diced
1 teaspoon corriander seed
1 1/2 tablespoons madras curry powder
1 teaspoon garam marsala
1 egg
1/4 cup rice flour
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
3 tablespoons cooking oil, divided
salt and pepper

Slaw Ingredients

2 cups chopped red cabbage
1/2 cup carrots
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon corriander
1/2 teaspoon siracha
pinch of salt and pepper


Combine the coconut, curry powder, garam marsala, and coriander seed. Heat 1/2 tablespoon of cooking oil in a pan and cook the coconut and spice mixture over medium heat for about 3 minutes stirring occasianally to prevent burning. Drain and wash the chickpeas. Add the chickpeas to the coconut mixture and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Add a pinch of salt while it is cooking. Put the chickpea mixture into a food processor and blend until the chickpeas are just crushed and mixed with the spices.

Add the other 1/2 tablespoon of cooking oil to the pan and saute the onions, carrots, and jalapeno until slightly browned. Once done, combine with the chickpeas. Beat the egg and add to the mixture along with the rice flour. Mix well to form a dough. Add in the chopped cilantro and season with salt and pepper.

Roll the dough out on a cutting board. Form the burgers using a large biscuit cutter. Depending on how thick you like your burgers, the recipe should make between 4-8 patties. Once they are cut, place them on a plate or flat surface and freeze for at least 15 minutes. This will help the burgers stay together while cooking.

To cook the burgers, add a tablespoon of cooking oil to a nonstick skillet. When oil is hot, add burgers and cook on each side approximately 3-4 minutes until the patties start to brown. You could also try this on a grill surface, using care that the burgers do not fall apart. If you do this, I would recommend using a grill tray instead of putting them directly on the grates.

Prepare the slaw ingredients by combining all of the ingredients together. Serve the burgers on a regular bun, flatbread, pita, or no bread
with a serving of slaw on each.

If you don't cook all of the burgers, you could easily package them up, freeze them, and take them out as you need them. Enjoy!