Chickpea burgers

This may be the best vegetarian burger I've ever made, and I invented the recipe sort of by accident. I had chickpeas to use up, and some brown rice, and I was looking all over the internet for a burger recipe I could use. The only problem is that they all looked so awful, tasteless, and starchy. I don't really want to put two cups of rolled oats into a burger, because it sounds stodgy to me.

Well, there's plenty of starch in these burgers, but for some reason they didn't seem terribly starchy or stodgy, especially since I made the hamburger buns purposely rather small and thin. I liked the flavor of the chickpeas in the burger, especially the lovely golden crust that formed around them. In the future, I think I might add some more vegetables into this recipe for extra flavor and texture, or some herbs and spices. I'd like to experiment with finely grated carrot and finely diced celery. You could team the burgers up with any toppings you like, really--tomato and lettuce would be good. I used baby spinach, a slice of cheese, and a little bit of mayonnaise, and it was lovely. It passed the exacting toddler test, too.

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked chickpeas
1 cup cooked brown rice
2 tablespoons raw onion, very finely chopped
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 teaspoon kosher salt (I know this sounds like a lot, but you sort of need the flavor)
a few good grinds of pepper
1 1/2 cups fresh whole wheat breadcrumbs (zap a couple of pieces of bread in the food processor)
1 egg, beaten

1 tablespoon peanut oil (or any other kind of oil you have; however, I like peanut because you can heat it to high temperatures)

Hamburger buns and the toppings of your choice

Put the chickpeas into the food processor and pulse a few times until they're roughly chopped. (They shouldn't look like hummus.) Add the rice to the food processor and pulse once, so that the rice is cut up but not a mush.

Transfer the mixture to a large bowl. Add the onion, garlic powder, rosemary, kosher salt, pepper, breadcrumbs, and beaten egg. Mix well to combine. Form four round patties from the mixture, trying to get them as flat as possible so that they'll brown well.

Heat the oil in a large non-stick or cast-iron frying pan over medium-high heat until it's shimmering. Add the patties and cook, covered, for 3-5 minutes on each side, until the burgers get a golden-brown crust.

Serves 4.