STEEMIT CULINARY CHALLENGE #11 : Veggie Potato Burger (Original Recipe with Pictures)

First time doing the Steemit Culinary Challenge, making something I've never made before - burgers. I normally don't eat meat and don't really know how to cook it, so I decided to go with a veggie burger. I made it from potatoes, a little bit thicker than traditional potato pancakes or latkes, that Jewish people make for Hanukkah. Here's what we're making:

This is a fairly simple recipe in terms of mixing and matching, but it has a few different steps.

For the burger, you will need a potato, an egg, some flour, and spices. I decided to follow the yellow road, so I used curry, turmeric, ginger and nutmeg. But the most important thing when cooking potatoes is to remember that potatoes and pepper are best friends! You will also need a bun, and some things to put in it :) I went with tomato sauce, lettuce, pickles and an onion. I really wanted to make something spicy and kinda sour.

First thing I did, I cut up the onion. Onions generally have very strong taste, but in fact they have more sugar than apples! In order to release this sweetness, we put onions in water. It will be kept there while we prepare everything else, for maybe a half an hour, and it will lose its sting, becoming soft and mild.

Clean off the potato nicely. We don't want any skin left on it. Then proceed to grate it!

Once grated, put the potato in a kitchen paper towel.

Wrap it up in a ball and squeeze it as much as you can. We want to get rid of as much water as possible. Once dried, put it in a bowl and mix with an egg.

Next you want to put two or three big spoons of flour.

And then a really, really generous amount of pepper. There is just something with baked or fried potatoes and pepper. I don't know what, but trust me :)

Next thing, mix up the spices: curry, turmeric, salt, nutmeg, ginger. I like to mix them before hand, and sometimes if I make too much, I leave the mix (masala) in a jar for some other recipe.

Mix the mix with the mix of potatoes, egg and flour :) Put some flour on a wooden board. This is where we'll create our patties. The mixture is sticky and kinda difficult to handle, but with enough flour it should hold together.

Make a small ball out of potato mix and put on the wooden board with flour. Gently squeeze it to form a burger patty, turning it on both sides. Meanwhile, heat up about 3 cm of oil in a pan.

Carefully place the burger into heated oil.

Fry it for about 5 minutes, or until you feel that it became firm from the heated side. Turn it around.

Fry until it gets the golden, crispy crust.

Next, we want to dry it off from oil. Place the patty between two sheets of kitchen paper, and wait for about 5-10 minutes. You will see the paper becoming more oily and the patty becoming more dry. Careful! We don't want it too dry.

Preparing the bun! Cover both sides with tomato sauce. I don't really like ketchup - there is such a wide variety of different tomato sauces that have a more unique taste. This one is made with eggplants and zucchini.

Pickles will provide necessary contrast to the warm and hot burger patty.

Our tamed onion will go great with potato burger, and lettuce is just necessary in a burger, as far as I'm concerned :)

And that is it! :) Here is me with the best veggie burger in the world, confirming that I, in fact, made and promptly ate this spicy bite. (sorry for the bad quality, my front camera sucks)

And let us take one last look at the wonderful and tasty Steemit potato burger!

Thank you to the organizers, judges and sponsors for making this Challenge happen, and to @englishtchrivy for letting me know about it! It's great fun to cook together, and it solves the eternal question of what should I make for lunch tomorrow :D