Vegan Okara Burgers

This might not be too interesting to anybody who doesn’t make soy milk. If you do, you are always on the lookout for something to make with the okara — or leftover soy pulp resulting from straining the soy milk. Okara is still full of nutrition and fiber, so it seems a shame to compost it.

OKARA BURGERS  are not hard to stir up, they use up the okara from making three batches of soy milk — which I do at least twice a week — and they are an easy dinner for a hot summer day, along with some salad and noodle or potato salad. You don’t need to serve okara burgers on a bun, but I had some around, so I did.

These can be made with various vegetables, but I used what I had on hand. This recipe makes sixteen burgers, and you can then easily freeze them for a later time — a gift to your future self, who is most likely too hot to cook. 

Ingredients

2 ½ cups — okara, or soy pulp (two tubs of mashed tofu would probably also work)

1 cup — cooked rice cereal (or whatever other cooked grain you have left over, or crumbled bread)

1 cup — gluten powder (you will need some sort of flour product to help the burger stick together; use something else if you are gluten-intolerant)

10 cloves — garlic, minced

2 large — onions, chopped

1 large — green onion, chopped

2 large — radishes, chopped (I wanted some color; red or yellow peppers would also work)

4 Tblsp. olive oil

Seasonings — salt, black pepper, red pepper, turmeric, tamari, curry powder, or whatever else you like. Mine weren’t flavorful enough, so I ended up sprinkling tamari on them at the end. A mild burger isn’t so bad, though, if you serve it with ketchup or mustard. I prefer mustard.

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Saute the vegetables — onion, garlic, green onion, and peppers if you use them (not the radishes, though).

Mix them in with any cooked leftover grains you have (rice, oatmeal, corn grits, or bread crumbs), the soy pulp/okara, the gluten powder or other flour, the chopped radishes, and the seasonings.

Oil two large cookie sheets. Pat out sixteen flat rounds, about half an inch thick. Bake the patties for forty minutes on one side and twenty to thirty minutes on the other. You may have to move the pans up or down in your oven. You want the outside to get crispy, but the inside will still be soft and chewy (if you use the gluten powder).

Don’t make the mistake of telling anyone what is in these. My younger boys are prejudiced against okara because I have tried to put it in so many dishes. My older son loved them, though, as did my partner. They are good cold the next day for a snack.