Black bean burger patties, gluten version

In my previous post about homemade black bean burger patties, I speculated about ways of binding the ingredients together that might produce a firmer, less squishy patty. I also considered the possibility of doing away with the egg to make a truly vegan patty. There are a number of substances that might be good candidates for such a binder, but one of the easiest to get hold of--and, I thought, the most promising--was wheat gluten.

Gluten is best known as the protein that gives bread its tenacity, forming a tough network of elastic strands that traps the gases produced by fermentation. I thought it possible that this elastic network might serve to imitate the connective tissue that gives meat its firm consistency. I could have relied upon the gluten supplied by ordinary white flour but I thought I would have a better chance of success by using gluten flour, which consists far more gluten than plain flour; gluten flour is about 75% protein, compared to about 10% protein in all-purpose flour.

To test this, I mixed up a half-sized batch of black bean mixture according to the recipe given in the previous post except that, instead of adding half an egg as the original recipe called for, I added 1 tbsp of gluten flour and 3 tbsp of warm water. I honestly didn't know how much gluten would give the results I wanted so I settled on the 1 tbsp amount for the sake of simplicity. When mixed and mashed, this produced a very tenacious sort of paste, difficult to mash because of its strong tendency to form a single mass that clung to the masher. Strands of gluten were very easily seen during mashing. The resulting mixture, however, seemed to have approximately the same consistency as the mixture using egg as a binder. Possibly it could be handled with a bit less care and still hold together.

Frying up a patty with a little soybean oil as before, the result looked appetizing enough (see left), but the patty did not hold together better. In fact, it seemed to be even squishier. After just a few bites the patty is mushing out of the sides of the burger (see below left). It still tasted good, though.

It's possible that ten minutes in a frying pan isn't enough time to "set" the gluten. I have seen a recommendation in one meatless burger recipe to bake rather than fry or grill the patties. I can see how that might help but baking removes one of the great advantages of burgers, the fact that you can simply slap a disc of meat into a pan for a few minutes each side.

It seems that the answer to this problem lies elsewhere than with gluten. More on this question later.