http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/31/dining/veggie-burgers.html 2016-09-05 09:39:22 The Veggie Burger’s Ascent The newest meatless burgers aren’t obligatory additions to menus. They’re the stars. === It had been a culinary nobody, mushy and maligned. But when a chef as decorated as Daniel Humm turns his attention to perfecting a veggie burger, the signal is clear: That second-fiddle vegetarian staple has arrived. Mr. Humm, whose restaurant “We wanted this to be able to stand next to our beef burger and our chicken burger, not be a dish we just put on the menu for the sake of it,” he added. After decades as an amateur player eager for a big break, the veggie burger has made its ascent, becoming a destination dish and hashtag darling as never before. The newest generation of veggie burgers has moved from the edges of the menu — at best an interesting challenge for chefs to tackle — to its center, a dish to offer not just for the sake of meat-avoiding customers, but to make memorable in its own right. To do that, they are turning to a vast arsenal of ingredients and techniques to get the flavor, texture and heft they’re seeking. April Bloomfield created a veggie burger inspired by soondae, a dark Korean blood sausage commonly stuffed with noodles, rice or vegetables, to serve at Dan Barber is adding his veggie burger, made with beet and carrot juice pulp, to the rotation on the new bar menu at “It’s an umami addition,” he said, enhancing the flavors in the meat-free patty, and it’s a conscious tweak on the typical American ratio of meat to vegetables and grains. It also does not presume that all veggie burger eaters are vegetarians. (Though you can leave off the bacon if you’d like.) Brooks Headley, a former pastry chef at Del Posto, has built an entire restaurant, And the recent arrival of the “I had to sit there and tell myself, ‘This is not a burger,’” he said. But while the Impossible Burger is about what high-tech science can do with old-school food, chefs are still working to elevate veggie burgers using the more traditional tools of the kitchen. “We approach it like an Italian restaurant would approach meatballs: You’d use different meat and seasonings,” Mr. Headley said. “We’re trying to use everything in our arsenal to make this mix that’s superdelicious, that can be formed into a patty and seared on a griddle to get that crackly crust.” His vegan patty is made with fresh vegetables, grains and beans. To bind it together, he uses a potato starch slurry that, when heated to about 180 degrees, “gelatinizes so you’ve got a binding quality that’s similar to using egg,” he said. Chloe Coscarelli, the “Cupcake Wars” winner behind the popular vegan “Sometimes you see veggie burgers made with 100 ingredients, a kitchen-sink burger,” she said. “It’s better when you curate a burger.” One of her burgers is made of sweet potatoes, black beans and quinoa, and is topped with guacamole, corn salsa, chipotle aioli and, for texture, crispy tortilla chips. “The first thing that comes to people’s mind is, ‘It’s not meat, so what is it?’” she said. “People knowing and understanding the ingredients is a plus.” At Ms. Camera, who has never tasted a beef burger, has a veggie burger outlook similar to Ms. Coscarelli’s: concentrate on vegetables, grains and “easy-to-understand ingredients in a familiar incarnation.” “It’s a cheeseburger,” Ms. Camera said. “It’s not intimidating.” Aesthetics matter more than ever in this new veggie burger landscape. John Secretan, the owner of What they sought was a fast-food-style indulgence — “the same experience as eating an In-N-Out Burger,” said Mr. Secretan — with elements like melted Gruyère that make the meal “sensuous.” He kept his brown rice, walnut and mushroom patty the same, but changed its accouterments, adding the cheese, braised onions and sautéed mushrooms. The goal was to maintain quality while creating that juicy, visceral experience his new customers craved — in terms of looks, like “the Carl’s Jr. commercial burger dripping all over you,” he said. Even diners in a meat-and-potatoes town like Cleveland have an appetite for a top-notch veggie burger. Erik Roth, the chef at Most important, he said, there’s no room for error. “Vegans are detail-oriented, so if you mess up, you’re done,” he said.