The Best Veggie Burger

We need to talk about the veggie burger. I know. I KNOW. Some of you are already typing the angry email. Save it. Pour yourself a glass of water, sit down, and listen, because what I'm about to tell you is going to change your life and possibly your zip code. Bigly does veggie burgers. Bigly does them BETTER than anybody. It's not even close. It's a slaughter.

Many people don't know this — very smart people, they're shocked when I tell them — but the veggie burger has been around for THOUSANDS of years. The Vikings had a version. Look it up. They called it something else, probably in Old Norse, who knows, I had people check, it was definitely a thing. A guy named Ramón also makes one — different continent, same energy — and Ramón has never been wrong about anything in his entire life. And every single one of those burgers, every Viking one, every Ramón one, every sad gray puck from the back of the supermarket freezer that tastes like cardboard fed to a sadder cardboard — they are ALL inferior to this one. This is the peak. The summit. The final form.

The other recipe sites — you know the ones, the cookie banner that asks you to consent to '487 trusted partners,' four hundred eighty seven, who are these partners, why do they need my data, what a sad situation — those sites will tell you to mash a can of beans and call it a burger. WRONG. You need black beans AND mushrooms AND oats AND toasted walnuts. You need the MAILLARD on the outside. You need a binder that actually binds. You needed this recipe ten years ago. You have it now. You're welcome.

There it is. A veggie burger that holds together, has a crust, and tastes like food — actual food, prepared by someone who cares. Serve it to a skeptic, a card-carrying steak person, the kind who'd argue with a salad. They take a bite. They go quiet. They take another. They say nothing because there is nothing to say. The burger has spoken for itself. The burger always speaks for itself. Beautiful.