The Breakfast Ingredient Will Prevent Your Veggie Burgers From Falling Apart

Veggie burgers are a tricky beast — converting ingredients like beans and chickpeas into something that tastes good and has an appealing texture is a major challenge. But even if you've got the ingredients to make a truly delicious veggie burger, it won't be much good if your burger completely falls apart while you're grilling it — and this is perhaps the biggest challenge when it comes to veggie burgers.

For this reason, your veggie burger absolutely needs to include a binder — an ingredient that helps your veggie patties stick together (to be fair, this isn't specific to veggie burgers: Regular burgers also often use a binder). And one breakfast staple works marvelously for this: eggs. There are a couple of reasons for this: They have a lot of protein, which generally helps to glue disparate ingredients together. But it also helps that when they're cooked, eggs go from liquid to solid, meaning all those traces of liquid egg through your burger patty will act a little like wet cement drying and sticking together. You won't need a whole package of them to do the trick: Just one egg might be okay for a batch of four to six burgers, although some recipes might suggest two eggs. It can depend on the ingredients: For example, beans are a starchy binding agent, so a veggie burger made with beans might need fewer eggs.

Of course, if you're making a veggie burger, there's a distinct possibility you don't want any animal products in there, so eggs might be off the table as a binding agent. Fortunately, there's no shortage of other options out there. Another common breakfast ingredient that also works a charm as a binding agent is oats. The exact amount you need varies by recipe — anywhere from a half cup (for four smaller burgers) up to two cups for a batch of six. Bear in mind that oats will impart a slight grassy flavor, so it might be worth toasting them for a tastier, nutty twist.

Beyond oats, another hot tip for binding your veggie burgers is a so-called "flax egg." Despite the name, this binding agent won't taste anything like an egg (it's more nutty in flavor), but it does help ingredients stick together particularly well. To make them, just mix a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds with three tablespoons of water and leave it to sit for a few minutes to thicken. This ratio is a substitute for one egg — if you think you need two eggs to make everything stick together, just double it.

Flax eggs and oats are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to binding agents. There's no shortage of other options out there. Bread crumbs are a popular option for burgers, but you can also use flour or grains like rice.