Cooking Equipment

Appears in
Veggie Burgers Every Which Way: Fresh, Flavorful, and Healthy Plant-Based Burgers
Veggie Burgers Every Which Way

By Lukas Volger

Published 2021

  • About
Making veggie burgers is not a difficult culinary endeavor, but there are a few cooking tools that make the job a bit easier. Aside from the standard batterie de cuisine (good knives; a big, heavy cutting board; mixing bowls; a spatula; etc.), the following items will come in handy.
  • Sieve: A sieve makes the job of cleaning beans, rice, and grains infinitely easier, especially if you can find one that fits inside a larger bowl so that the contents of the strainer can be submerged in water and then lifted out. Plastic colanders have holes that are too large for small grains and beans.
  • Salad spinner: A salad spinner makes the job of cleaning greens and leafy herbs—such as spinach, kale, chard, parsley, and cilantro—a snap. The ideal salad spinner is essentially just a colander that fits inside a larger plastic bowl and has some kind of spinning mechanism that rids the greens of water. If you choose one that does not drain water out the bottom, the bowl that the colander fits into will come in handy for submerging greens and swishing them around to clean off dirt.
  • Box grater: Grated hardy vegetables like carrots and beets produce excellent texture in veggie burgers, as you’ll see in several of the recipes in this book. While I have a food processor with a grater attachment, I reach for the box grater much more often—it’s just so much easier to clean. There’s no need to own an expensive one, but do know that once the blades on the grates have dulled, the tool will be much more difficult—and dangerous—to use. It can be worth spending a bit more on a model that’s properly sharp. The Cuisinart box grater is my favorite.
  • Potato masher: This comes in handy for mashing beans and vegetables when a fork doesn’t seem to be enough for the job. I prefer a “wire” potato masher to the kind that is a flat piece of metal with perforations.
  • Food processor: Here’s the bad news: For some of the burgers in this book, there isn’t really a way around using a food processor. A food processor will blitz everything up with minimal effort. They come in many sizes, ranging from mini choppers to industrial-size Robot Coupes. A miniature food processor can be used for veggie burgers as long as you process in small batches. A blender is unfortunately not a great substitute because it requires too much liquid in order to get the mixture moving (you’d end up with a veggie burger smoothie). But I lived for many years without a food processor, so I understand your predicament if you don’t own one. Not all the recipes here require a food processor, and where applicable, I’ve listed alternate preparation methods.
  • Cast-iron skillet: Cast-iron skillets are great because they are significantly less expensive than other oven-safe skillets, they heat evenly, and they improve with use, developing their own unique patina by absorbing the oils of what cooks in them. (I started developing many of the recipes in this book using a new 10-inch/25 cm cast-iron skillet, and I now have a wonderfully seasoned pan.) Cast-iron skillets come in many different sizes—anywhere from 6 to 18 inches (15–46 cm) in diameter. In addition to my 10-inch skillet, I have a small 6-inch one, which is perfect for cooking a single veggie burger. But in general I get the most use out of the 10-inch skillet. Just be sure to care for your cast-iron skillet correctly: no harsh soaps, no submerging in soapy water, no scraping clean with steel wool or other abrasive sponges, unless you want to reseason your pan completely. To clean, just quickly and gently wipe out the pan using warm water and a small amount of dish soap, then blot dry with a clean towel (if left to air-dry, skillet will begin to rust).
  • Nonstick, oven-safe sauté pan: Ideally all your skillets and sauté pans are oven-safe, but if you’re striving to cook with less oil (I don’t worry much about that here because most of these recipes are very low in fat), then the nonstick pan is the way to go. I find that it’s worth spending a little extra money on these, as the better nonstick coatings last significantly longer. Look for one that has an oven-safe handle, usually made out of stainless steel. And while these are oven-safe, avoid putting them in an oven that’s much hotter than 400°F (200°C)—higher heat can speed up the deterioration of the nonstick coating.
  • Meat grinder: Seriously! Well, I made veggie burgers with a friend who has a meat grinder attachment on her KitchenAid stand mixer, and it did a beautiful job of blitzing the vegetable-and-bean mixtures. By all means, don’t go buy a meat grinder (much less a KitchenAid) just for this purpose. But if you have one lying around, you might discover some surprising uses for it with these recipes.
  • Rice Cooker: I don’t know why I waited so long to invite a rice cooker into my life, but when I finally did, I was shocked by how much value it brought. Many of the recipes here call for cooked rice, and when you have a rice cooker, you hardly need the foresight to cook it in advance. I have a small model made by Muji, and it works great for my small apartment kitchen.
  • FryDaddy: If you’ve any plans to deep-fry with any regularity, a FryDaddy—literally a metal bucket that plugs into an electrical socket and keeps oil at the proper 375°F (190°C) for frying—makes the job infinitely easier and cleaner. The fact that it maintains the temperature for you—no more finessing with the burner to get the oil to stay at the right temperature—is reason enough to own one. There are a few burgers here that lend themselves to deep-frying, but it’s the french fries that will make the FryDaddy earn its keep.