This easy, baked and grillable Spicy BBQ Cauliflower Chickpea Veggie Burger is the best veggie burger recipe you can find. A healthy and Gluten-free vegetarian burger patty that’s great for a Friday night barbecue or weekday meal prep. Vegan option too!
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If you’ve been here a while, you probably know that veggie burgers and falafel are one of my go-to meal preps, so this was just another one of my experiments.
I’m not sure why – may be I need to find the right hashtags – but all these burger posts never do so well on Instagram. So I really had no intention of posting it.
But I shared a BTS from when I was making these on my story, and there were quite a few positive reactions.
For some reason I thought it was a good idea to post a “react to this if you want me to post the recipe” and a bit too many people did.
So here we are, 2 days later.
Ingredients for Spicy BBQ Cauliflower-Chickpea Veggie Burger
This healthy and spicy veggie burger recipe is made with chickpeas and has no beans, no mushrooms and no soy. There’s no bread crumbs in here either since they’re made with oatmeal.
- Chickpeas – Also known as garbanzo beans – you can use the canned ones or cook from dry beans.
- Cauliflower or freshly homemade cauliflower rice
- Carrots
- Onion – Yellow or Red would be good
- Minced Garlic
- Olive Oil – Just a bit for cooking the vegetables that go in the burger patty
- Spices: Paprika and Cumin
- Cayenne Pepper – This is what makes the veggie burgers spicy. Feel free to adjust the amount, but you really want to keep this in.
- Salt & Pepper
- Rolled/Instant Oats – To help bind the burgers but also keep them gluten free
- Eggs
- Barbecue Sauce – cant have a chickpea cauliflower bbq veggie burger without this!
How to make Homemade Cauliflower Veggie Burger with Barbecue Sauce
- Rice the cauliflower and carrots into large grains using a food processor.
- Use a food processor and finely chop the onion too.
- Cook the onion and garlic in a bit of oil on a medium heated skillet.
- Add the cauliflower rice and carrots and cook again until just soft. Add the spices( paprika, cumin, cayenne pepper), salt and pepper, stir and cook another 30 seconds.
- Transfer the veggies to a bowl and let cool completely.
Place the bowl in the freezer to speed up the process. - Pulse the chickpeas and oats roughly in the food processor.
- Combine all the components: Add the chickpeas, oats, eggs and barbecue sauce to the cooled veggies.
- Stir to form the “dough”. Let it rest for 10 minutes or chill in the fridge for a bit if it’s too sticky.
- Use your hands or a cup measure (see below) to shape the burger patties.
How to make perfectly shaped Veggie Burger Patties
For a perfect shape, use a 1-cup measure lined with plastic wrap to form the patties:
- Line the measure with plastic wrap
- Fill in the dough and press it down
- Then lift it out with the liner and flip it on to the cooking surface (or plate for grilling later)
How to cook Baked, Air Fryer and Grillable BBQ Sauce Veggie Burger
For a healthy and low fat recipe, I prefer to bake my veggie burger patties in the oven – this takes about 27-30 minutes at 350°F.
You can also cook the burgers in an air fryer for about 20 minutes at the same 350°F, but ne sure to flip them halfway through.
Grilling these vegan patties is super easy too – just lightly grease, and then grill them on each side for about 4-5 minutes (8-10 minutes in all). Do the same if you want to fry them – medium heat on a lightly greased nonstick skillet.
Tips for the best Chickpea Cauliflower Rice BBQ Veggie Burgers:
- Make sure you completely drain and dry the chickpeas or beans or the mixture won’t hold well.
- Use a food processor the chop the vegetables so they get very fine.
- Don’t let the cauliflower rice and carrots get too fine or it will get soggy when cooked and ruin the texture of the burger.
- Don’t over-cook the cauliflower or the burger mix will be too soggy.
- Let the cooked cauliflower mixture cool before you make the burger patties or the eggs will cook with the heat.
- Let the burger mix stand for a bit so that the oats absorb some moisture and makes it easy to handle.
- Add some extra oats if the mix is too wet to handle.
- Divide the mix equally so you get even patties that would take the same amount of time to cook.
- Lightly grease the baking sheet or use a parchment paper so they don’t stick to the bottom.
Can you Meal Prep Veggie Burgers or Store Burger Patty?
Make Ahead:
- Prepare the mix for the bbq cauliflower chickpea veggie burger, shape patties, and then keep them sealed until ready to cook.
- Fridge: In an airtight container for 3-4 days.
- Freezer: Transfer to parchment-lined baking sheet and freeze individually. When frozen, stack with pieces of parchment paper in between, place in freezer bag and freeze. Keeps for 2-3 months.
- Thaw and then cook according to recipe.
Storage:
- Fridge: In an airtight container for 5 days.
- Freezer: Transfer to parchment-lined baking sheet and freeze individually. When frozen, stack with pieces of parchment paper in between, place in freezer bag and freeze. Keeps about 3-4 weeks.
Thaw and then reheat in microwave.
Substitutions for a Cauliflower Vegan Burger
The big change to make these vegetarian burgers vegan is to replace the eggs with flax eggs or chia eggs. Stir 2 Tbsp Chia/Ground Flax Seeds + 5-6 Tbsp Water and let rest 5-7 mins.
Some other replacements to make:
- Instead of Chickpeas, make Black Eyed Peas or White Bean burgers
- Switch out the Instant Oats with rolled oats shredded in a food processor.
- If you’re not concerned about the gluten free part, you can also replace the oats with bread crumbs.
Some more Easy Veggie Burgers with no beans and mushrooms:
- Curry-Spiced Cauliflower Chickpea Burgers
- Broccoli “Cheese” Vegan Veggie Burger
- Spiced White Bean and Carrot Veggie Burgers
- Very Possible Spiced Lentil and Beet Veggie Burger
Easy Spicy Barbecue Cauliflower-Chickpea Veggie Burgers
Ingredients
- 1½ cups Chickpeas, or Black Eyed Peas or White Beans, Canned (390g) or Cooked from dry (110g)
- 2 cups Cauliflower, Chopped, 214g
- 1 cup Carrot, Chopped, 128g
- ⅔ small Onion, about 80g
- ½ tsp Olive Oil
- 1½ tsp Minced Garlic, 1-2 cloves
- 1 Tbsp paprika
- 1 tsp Cumin
- ½ – ¾ tsp Cayenne Pepper, reduce for less spicy
- ½ tsp Black Pepper
- ½ tsp Salt
- 1 cup Instant or Quick Oats, 90g
- 2 Eggs
- 2 Tbsp Barbecue Sauce
Instructions
Prep:
- Preheat oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Drain peas/chickpeas/beans until dry.
- One at a time, pulse cauliflower and carrot in a food processor and until ground into large “rice” grains (or use a large-hole grater).
- Chop onion using food processor or knife.
Make burgers:
- Heat oil in a nonstick skillet over medium and fry onion and garlic until fragrant, 2 minutes.
- Add cauliflower and carrot and cook about 3-4 minutes until tender and cooked. Add paprika, cumin, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper and cook for 30 seconds.
- Transfer to large bowl and set aside to cool. Place in freezer to speed up process.
- Pulse peas/beans and oats in food processor to form rough textured mixture.
- In a small bowl, whisk eggs.
- Add pea/bean-oat mixture, eggs and barbecue sauce to cooled vegetables and mix.
- Let rest for 5-10 minutes so that the mixture gets thick.
- Divide the mixture into 8 parts.
- Shape burgers: Line a 1-cup measuring cup with plastic wrap, add a portion of the burger mix and press down to pack. Lift out of cup with lining edge, and flip onto baking sheet. Flatten down slightly
- OR
- Use slightly wet/greased hands and shape into ¾” thick patties.
- You should have 8 patties.
Cook:
- Bake for 25-30 minutes until light brown and crisp (or use air fryer for 20 minutes). Allow to cool before removing from pan, or they will be soft.
- OR
- Heat a skillet or grill over medium, grease well with olive oil or spray and cook burgers for 4-5 minutes each side (8-12 minutes total).
Notes
- Make sure beans are completely dried or the burgers wont hold.
Lightly oil your hands when shaping patties if using hands and they are too dry. - To replace eggs, use 2 flax eggs(2 Tbsp Flaxseed Meal + 5 Tbsp Water let rest 5 minutes)
- To replace instant oats:
- Use bread crumbs
- Use rolled oats and pulse in the food processor a few times so they tear up (don’t let them turn into flour).
- Let the mixture rest for about 10 minutes before shaping them so that the oats absorb as much moisture as possible. This is required or the mix will be too runny to hold.
- See blog post!
- Servings: 8 3½” patties | Serving size: 1 patty
- Calories: 141kcal
- Fat: 3.4g | Saturated fat: 0.6g
- Carbohydrates: 21.7g | Fiber: 5.3g | Sugar: 4.2g
- Protein: 6.7g
