Emergency Burger Buns Recipe

Kayleigh here. So, I do love cooking dinner every night, and making as much as possible from scratch, but I tend to prepare most of the more complex dishes over the weekend, and heat or reheat them on the weekdays.

The other week, though, I was driving home in the evening, and realized that those lovely brown rice burgers sitting in the fridge were...rather lacking in buns.

So, in a frantic fit of using what was on hand, I fried up a batch of.... sort of arepas, sort of corn pancakes. Not as light as a bulkie roll, but amazing for a last minute fix, when there's no way your hunger can wait for that darn yeast to activate. And, actually, it went quite well with the earthy flavors and spicy mayonnaise-based sauce.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup Corn Flour
1/4 cup Garbanzo Flour
1/4 ts Guar Gum
1 Tbs Brown Sugar (or Molasses, for a wheaty taste)
1/2 ts Baking Powder
1 Egg
1/4 cups milk
1 Tbs melted or softened butter
Salt to taste
Peanut/vegetable oil for pan

1) Combine all ingredients in a bowl, stirring ONLY until ingredients are mostly combined. Over stirring can make it tough!
2) Put a pan on medium heat, putting in enough oil to lubricate things a bit. We didn't deep fry these puppies, but you can if you'd like more of an arepa feel to them.
3) Spoon batter into the pan. You should be able to have enough for three bun-sized dollops.
4) Just cook these like pancakes- try flipping them after four minutes. If the bottom has begun to brown, then it's good to flip. Cook the other side for three or so minutes, until brown on that side as well.
5) After letting them cool for five minutes or so, slice them in half. Then, either grill the insides lightly, or use as is with whatever sauces, patties, and toppings you want!

Another possible variation of this would be to add a bit extra sugar, cook with butter instead of oil, and serve as corn pancakes for a different breakfast spin! Well, and top with peanut butter if you're Kayleigh, and chocolate chips if you're Jason.

Jason here. These turned out surprising well for a spur of the moment sort of dish. A couple things to note.

They came out a little oily as they need to be fried in a pan. This makes eating a burger a messier enterprise than usual.

Second thing, these were way better fresh. We ended up making a ton of extras, and freezing them to use later. Initially they were this delicious crispy fried bread texture which went awesome with the burger and sauce we used. Unfortunately, after reheating in our toaster oven they had more of a stale bread texture to them. Luckily they still had a good corn bread like taste to them. What I got out of this, is don’t make a ton of extras and you will have one really delicious, if messy, burger bun on your hands.

We'll be trying to engineer a better bun recipe in the future, when we have time to wait for rising, but we'll definitely be cooking these babies up next time we need a quick fix!