Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Recipes

Dilled Chickpea Burger With Spicy Yogurt Sauce

No one will ever know these burgers are made of chickpeas, unless you tell them. Shallots, chickpeas, tahini, and spices are combined and sautéed to crisp perfection for one of the most satisfying veggie burgers we’ve tasted.

Here we’ve stuffed them into pita pockets and doused them with yogurt sauce, but they’re just as wonderful with ketchup and mustard, or raw onion and a little hummus and Israeli Salad (page 81). These are thinner patties that should be cooked until crisp. Handle them as little as possible, and let them cook well on the first side before flipping. yogurt sauce.

Serves 6

1 cup plain vegan yogurt
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, well-drained and rinsed
1/3 cup fresh dill, finely chopped
1/2 cup shallots, minced
2 tablespoons plain dry bread crumbs
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons tahini
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
About 1/4 cup vegetable oil, for oiling the pan

6 pita pockets or buns

To make the yogurt sauce, place all the ingredients in a small bowl and stir ­until blended thoroughly.

To make the burger, lightly mash half of the chickpeas in a medium bowl. Add the dill, shallots, bread crumbs, and lemon juice and mix well.

In a food processor, combine the remaining chickpeas, tahini, salt, pepper and cumin until smooth. Add to the mashed chickpeas, mix well, and form into six to eight patties.

Oil a 12-inch skillet over medium heat and cook the burgers until very crispy and dark golden on both sides, about 6 minutes. Don’t flip them too much! Drain on paper towels or brown paper bags on a wire rack.

Stuff the patties in pita pockets. Drizzle with yogurt sauce.

From Mayim’s Vegan Table: More Than 100 Great-Tasting and Healthy Recipes from My Family to Yours by Mayim Bialik with Dr. Jay Gordon. Reprinted courtesy of Da Capo Lifelong Books.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version