Here is a very good recipe for making Quinoa and Tofu burgers.  Now, the Quinoa was quite expensive at $6 for the box which only makes 3 1-cup servings, but the tofu itself was surprisingly cheap at $1.25 for the package.  This was the first and last time I will ever make this recipe because of how expensive it was and how difficult it was to make.  I will say that it is good though.

So here is the original recipe that I got from the Noom Facebook page.

• 1 cup Cooked Quinoa
• 125 g extra firm tofu
• 1/2 cup Sweet Peas
• 2 tbs chopped scallions
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tbs oyster sauce
• salt & pepper

Wrap tofu in dish towel. Squeeze towel-wrapped tofu to extract as much liquid as possible. Transfer tofu to medium bowl. Using a fork, mash into small pieces and add cooked quinoa, sweet peas, scallions, fish sauce, oyster sauce and salt & pepper. Shape mixture into ½ inch thick patties. Cook over medium heat w/a drop of oil.

My problem is that I hate 3 of those ingredients which are scallions, fish sauce and oyster sauce.  I hate onions and fish, so those 3 things had to go.  I have seen veggie burgers with red beans and corn in them, so I took those 3 things out and added 2 things and replaced the sauce with teriyaki sauce.  I also didn’t want to have leftover tofu, so I used all of it.  Since I used all of it, I basically had to triple the recipe.  I cooked the quinoa in the rice cooker and I thought I was making 2 cups because I used 1 cup of the quinoa with 2 cups of water, as per the rice cooker instructions, however, I don’t think I had 2 cups.  I had to make another serving and there is only 1 more serving in the box, which I should have just used the entire box, but I didn’t for some reason.

This is why I don’t like making food with ingredients that I hate, because I am always tempted to change it and it almost never works out.  I tried making a burger, but it wouldn’t stick in the pan.  Forget flipping it because it wouldn’t stick.  I was at my breaking point, but then decided to add some eggs.  My mother always told me that if you make hamburgers, add some eggs to keep the hamburgers from falling apart, so that’s what I did, and it did help, to a certain extent that is.  They didn’t fall apart when I flipped them or put them on the buns, but once you started to eat them, they basically crumbled into your mouth.  Oh and it wasn’t that tasty either  I put the bowl in the fridge and figured I would deal with it for lunch the next day.

So today I decided to add more eggs and that seems to have worked.  I made 1 single burger for lunch and it stayed firm and didn’t fall apart.  That is the picture you see above.  I made 16 more which are going in the freezer.  There was actually 1 more and I ate that when it finished because it’s actually quite tasty with the eggs lol.

The only reason I wanted to make these was because it was suggested by Noom, but the next time I want a veggie burger, I’ll just buy a garden burger from the store.