Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, August 09, 2022 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

What ingredients or method would produce a firm, chewy veggie burger? Bean-based burgers taste good, but they seem too mushy.

— Elaine French

Answer:

So that really kind of depends on what you're putting into it, you know, I do a mushroom and barley burger that I like a lot but the barley actually helps to be able to keep that texture really nice on that because I don't over cook it so it's not mushy, you know put a ton of water into it. Um, that's a really great one. I think that's actually on our website, too. but you know to be able to get it even the bean-based burgers that I've done, you know part of that is just getting not adding too much water to them if you don't want to have that kind of You know, the mushy aspect of it I guess is keeping a lot of liquid out. Now. If you are using mushrooms remember that mushrooms retain water in them as well too. So when you're doing something like that, you might want to take the mushrooms and put them into a cheesecloth or into a towel and ring them out. So you get a lot of the liquid out of those mushrooms, but you might even retain a little to be able to put some on the top to be able to have a liquid if you use too much or if you take too much out. But part of that. Yeah, it's just being able to choose the ingredients. If you're being based Burgers, you know, like we just had somebody that night that we're quite good and it was I think it was beans and bread breadcrumbs and different herbs and spices into them as well. I think it was an aquafaba, you know binder as well too, but the key to that was again making sure it didn't have a lot of liquid into it. So it would bind together really well and that much part or fall apart really easy.
Dan Marek

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

rouxbe.com