Eva & Rachel Participate in Veguary: BBQ Chickpea Burgers
Eva showing off the delicious BBQ Chickpea Burger she made!
As you may have seen on our social media and through our newsletter outreach, Kelly’s Kitchen is partnering with AfroVegan Society in February in honor of Black History Month to amplify the work that AfroVegan Society does to make vegan meals and vegan recipes available to as many people as possible.
This partnership includes Kellys Kitchen doing the following:
Participating in weekly Veguary cooking demos (typically held every Friday at 1 pm EST)
Provide feedback about the recipes from our perspectives
Provide advice or tips to increase accessibility of the culinary process or recipe itself
Provide support to AfroVegan Society by ensuring every Veguary cooking demo has an ASL interpreter present for the live demos and to be featured in the recordings.
Provide support to AfroVegan Society by ensuring recorded Veguary demos have Captioning included.
Provide support to AfroVegan Society by ensuring there is a screen reader-friendly plain language version of the recipe available on their website for download.
We know that often times cooking in of itself is not accessible or inclusive of people with disabilities. One of the main goals of AfroVegan Society is making sure that vegan cooking and a vegan lifestyle are available to as mnay people as possible - and this includes people with disabilities!
Last week AfroVegan Society held TWO cooking demos, and Rachel, Operations Director, and Eva, Food Security Network Coordinator attended both and made both recipes to give you feedback on how it went, what they loved, and any additional tips for accessibility!
“When I was 16, I decided to go vegan with my parents. Before going plant-based we watched several documentaries to motivate us and read vegan cookbooks to research how to turn our favorite recipes plant-based. I remember this chapter of my life so vividly because we were always trying something new at the dinner table. I also remember this time well because it was challenging! I wish we had known that groups like Afro-Vegan Society were there to help us through this transition.
There are so many meals you take for granted when you consume animal products. When I was vegan, you would only catch me eating a veggie burger at a restaurant because I found the frozen ones at the store to be unappetizing and never dreamed of making them on my own.
Today I made my first homemade plant-based burger with the help of Jessica Carter, an instructor at Afro-Vegan Society. This was another quick recipe that took about 30 minutes from start to finish. These burgers are veggie packed and are held together with BBQ sauce plus the secret ingredient...chia seeds! If you're not a fan of butternut squash or need a way to sneak veggies onto the plates of the picky eaters at your dinner table, you can substitute veggies like beets and cauliflower.
My chickpea mashing skills were not that of Jessica's, so if you have a food processor, that might help your burger patties stick together better than mine. My first round of burgers were messy! I was new to this veggie patty thing and learned quickly that a smaller, thicker burger was much easier to flip than a large, thin one. I encourage folks who are new to cooking to watch Jessica make the recipe before you give it a try. She teaches you how to be present in the kitchen, listening and watching your food as your meal comes together. These are skills you can take with you in the next Afro-Vegan Society Veguary meal as well as other recipes in the future! Let us know what you think of this one. “
- Eva Houston, FSN Coordinator
“I am a HUGE fan of this recipe! I had a hard time getting my chickpea burger to stick together, but even though it didn’t look as beautiful as Jessica made hers, it was still delicious! I’m a big fan of hamburgers, I like to order them out at restaurants, and this is a meat substitute I would happily make again and even order out at a restaurant if it was available on the menu!
Unlike Eva, I do not have experience with eating more vegan-central meals. Our household has dabbled in vegetarian meals and enjoy that, but taking the plunge to all plant-based ingredients has felt overwhelming and expensive. The Veguary Series that AfroVegan Society hosts (along with a lot of other cooking demos on their YouTube channel and website) help make it feel less overwhelming and scary. And seeing that there are meal options that are affordable and under $10 is reassuring as well.
During the demo, Jessica talked about different options to season the chickpea patties and provide that umami - meat - flavor. One of her suggestions was to use Miso paste, which we actually had in our refrigerator. I added that to the patty mixture and it really did add a great taste to the chickpea burger!
The two tips I have for making this recipe are:
1. Watch the temperature on your stovetop. As Jessica reminded everyone, different stovetops heat differently and so you need to be more in tune to your particular heating device than the number value to turn the heat up to. If you know your stovetop burners run hot, then. turning the stovetop to medium heat may cause your patties to burn. Trust your intuition and feel confident in turning the heat down lower or up higher if needed. The nice thing is that this ISN’T meat, so you can’t risk not cooking it enough where you could eat raw meat and get sick!
2. When mashing the chickpeas, use whatever kitchen tools you have or are easiest for you. If you don’t have a potato masher you can use a meat cleaver, or even your hands. Anything to break up the chickpeas so they are mashed up enough to form into patties. They don’t have to be perfect, it’s about. being able to mix the ingredients together well so the flavor is consistent across the mash - and consistent across the cooked patties.
I am also gluten free so I made sure to get gluten free buns for this recipe - which did make the cost a little bit more because of the increased cost of gluten free buns. I’m a big fan of meatloaf and I kind of want to see if this would work in a meatloaf pan in the oven…”
-Rachel Kaplan, Operations Director
Watch the recorded cooking demo and make the recipe yourself by visiting the following links: