Mushroom Burgers

These are good. I've made better, but I lost the recipe and improvised this one. They tend to fall apart as you eat them, but they are tasty.

Start by caramelizing an onion in olive oil. Really caramelize it. Until it is at least portabella mushroom brown. Do this while chopping up the considerable amount of mushrooms needed to make these burgers. I chopped the 'shrooms up as small as I had the patience for. That worked out to be about half centimeter cubes on average. I used portabella, oyster and shitake mushrooms, mostly portabella because the others are more expensive.

Add them all to the pan with 6 cloves of chopped garlic and a splash of water to get them started. Once the water has left the fungus, add soy sauce as a seasoning and unnecessary source of umami. When all the liquid is gone, remove from heat and let cool. In hindsight, I should have cooked them down a bit further as I think this is what made the burgers fall apart in the end: Too much moisture.

Once cool enough to handle, mix in oatmeal, eggs, hot sauce (could have used more) and parmesan cheese. Mix well and let settle. I added 3 cloves of eviscerated garlic at this point. Really make it a paste to get a powerful garlic taste or chop it for a milder flavour.  Let the flavours marry and the oatmeal soften by letting it rest for a while, perhaps overnight.

Now, it is time to make the burgers. Don't form patties before you have buns. This is irresponsible behaviour, and you will likely end up with ill fitting patties in the end. Or, you can be like me. Get the buns, form the patties to size, and still make the patties way to big to actually stay between the halves. Competence!

See, they don't look too strange. Fry those burgers! 

Fry the patties in a bit of butter or olive oil. I like butter better. Always will, but in this case it makes a big difference. Fry them until they are about to burn, so the edges get crispy. I added extra hot sauce to the patty here. But it onto a bun, top with cheese and something green. Tonight, I made two thin patties, but some goat cheese in the middle and put them together. I stuffed the patty is what I'm trying to say. Good choice. Thinly sliced red pepper is a good addition as well. In the end it should look like this:

It's ok to get really close to the screen here, maybe drool a bit. Can you smell it? Smells like victory.