Chickpea Burgers

● 400 gr. of cooked Maizalito chickpeas
● 1 small red pepper
● 1 large onion
● 3 garlic cloves
● 1 lime
● Fresh parsley
● 1 spoon of paprika
● Salt
● Ground black pepper
● Virgin olive oil

To make this tasty recipe, the first thing we need is to cook the chickpeas. If you want to
make them at home, you have to soak them for a day before cooking them, or if you want
to save time, you can buy it by cans at the supermarket, which are already prepared.
Either way, it is essential to buy chickpeas that are small and have thin skin.

Once we have the cooked chickpeas, we can proceed to drain and wash them with a bit of
water. Once they are drained, transfer the chickpeas to a crusher or blender. Mix them
with the following ingredients: salt, pepper, paprika, fresh parsley (previously washed),
squeezed lime juice, and a drizzle of olive oil.
Once all the ingredients are blended together, you have to make sure that you get a dense and homogenous-looking paste. Once it is ready, you can transfer it to a good-sized bowl to mix the dough with the rest of the
ingredients.

Peel and finely chop the onion and garlic cloves. Wash the red pepper, remove the seeds and white veins from the inside and finely chop it, as we did with the other ingredients. Heat a pan with a drizzle of olive oil, and toss the onion with a bit of salt once it is hot, frying over medium heat for a few minutes.

Then add the minced garlic and the chopped red pepper, cooking it until they are tender, and then removing them, so they don’t stick to the pan.
After we remove the veggies from the pan, we drain the excess oil from the veggies and
then add them to the bowl with the dough. Then we need to stir the mixture with the
veggies with patience until they’re mixed well.

Then we are going to start making the burgers, by dividing the dough into balls of similar sizes. Once we have them all formed, we have to crush them by hand or with a kitchen utensil, shaping them in a circle, like a burger.
Once the burgers are ready, leave them in the fridge for a few hours, so the flavors can blend and get a better shape. Once we take them out of the fridge, we should be ready to cook them in a pan with a drizzle of oil. Cook each side for about 2 minutes, on medium heat, so that they cook well and get a golden color.

Be careful when flipping them, so they don’t disassemble, as they don’t have a very compact texture. Once they are done, you can serve them warm over burger bread and add other ingredients, like tomato, lettuce, onion, or sauces. You can also eat them without bread and substitute it for some garnish or salad. Once you eat them, you’ll see how delicious they are, and you won’t miss the meat.