This 120-second sauce will steal your BBQ
The right sauce can turn any veggie into a meal, and this one will be your new go-to. It’s also great on a burger—veggie or otherwise.
With the biggest grilling weekend of the year upon us, we’d like to set a couple things straight. First, no one on a plant-forward diet needs instructions for grilled vegetables; the recipe is the name. The trick to making them disappear is sauce, and we’ve got one you can put together faster than a PB&J. Second, it’s time to flip patty FOMO on its head. This July 4th, we’re celebrating independence from Big Beef, and making the vegetarian option the most-crushable burger at the BBQ—especially paired with your new favorite, goes-on-everything special sauce.
Part I: Gabriella vs. the Superiority Burger
The plant-based patty is one of NYC’s hardest-to-get eats. Can home cooks hope to replicate it?
The perfect veggie burger already exists. It comes from a tiny spot in New York City called Superiority Burger. Brooks Headley, a punk-rock-drummer-turned-pastry-chef opened the 300-square-foot joint in 2015, and quickly earned a rep for churning out some of the city’s most inventive vegetarian eats. The star was the veggie burger.
Even for skeptical carnivores, the patty nailed the sensory experience: It had enough fat to be juicy; balanced a moist, chewy center with crispy caramelized edges (smashburger vibes); and was seasoned just-so to avoid being tough. Bonus: Protein-rich ingredients like quinoa, walnuts, and chickpeas made it satisfying without sacrifice
Long lines became the norm—as did devouring your burger in a nearby park or on a stoop across the street. It was all very punk rock: The menus were written with Sharpie, and, whether you were a celebrity or Headley’s BFF, you waited.
After a 2-year pandemic shutdown, Headley opened Superiority Burger 2.0 early this year with a much larger location and an expanded menu. But the namesake burger still reigns supreme. And even with triple the space, it’s still tough to get a seat. Luckily you can make this burger at home thanks to Headley’s 2018 cookbook (and also the internet).
I decided to try it myself.
Warning: It takes two full hours to make these puppies, and a good chunk of that is prep. I dirtied three pans, a spice grinder, and a potato masher. I boiled, chopped, scrubbed, diced, toasted, ground, roasted, and crushed the patties’ 14 ingredients. That’s all before I ever looked at a grill or griddle. But trust me, every step is essential to building flavor and texture.
A few master strokes really beef up Headley’s quinoa base:
24-karat carrots. Diced carrots roast at 425 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes sans oil until they’re tiny cubes of carrot jerky gold. This draws moisture from the veg—creating a nice chew to the patty without making it mushy.
Smoke show. Headley doesn’t cook over charcoal, so smoke and spice come in via onions cooked until golden and hit with toasted fennel seed and chili powder.
Hi, chew. Chickpeas get coarsely smashed with a potato masher (two forks work, too) to create a ground-meat-like texture. Most veggie burger recipes would blitz the whole mess in a food processor, leading to a homogenous mush.
Fat stacks. Cooked quinoa and breadcrumbs fill out the mix, but fatty toasted walnuts are the real star: They provide a buttery richness. (This is why most vegan meatloaves are largely made of nuts.)
If you’re planning to toss the finished patties onto actual grill grates, don’t. They fell apart after I flipped them, even when frozen. Instead, sear them for a few minutes on each side in a cast-iron skillet. How is this perfect BBQ food if you can’t grill it?! Hear me out: Even if you’re cooking a beef burger, it’s better to use a flat top or cast iron pan—both of which you can put on the grill. The rendered fat stays around the patties instead of falling into the flames, keeping them moist; and surface contact is what develops that crispy brown crust.
At Superiority HQ, the patties come on a potato bun with Muenster cheese, dill pickle, lettuce and roasted tomatoes, but just treat them like any other patty. We had ours with lettuce, pickles, cheddar, and that sauce that for-real should go on everything (keep scrolling 👇 if you can’t wait). My burgers didn’t look exactly like the real deal (I used white quinoa instead of red), but the taste was as mind-bogglingly delicious as I remembered. Instantly you're hit with smokiness from the onions, fattiness from the nuts, and texture from the carrots and chickpeas. The quinoa makes up the majority of the burger, but it takes a backseat to the ingredient orchestra around it.
In a world filled with meat-mimickers like Impossible and Beyond, food journalists like Alicia Kennedy have wondered if true veggie burgers like this one are on the verge of extinction. It’s a fair question, but I’d wager that the Superiority Burger will endure. Meat eaters will love that it’s not overly vegetal. Vegetarians will appreciate that the patties don’t ooze fake-red or rely on cheap fillers and soy protein. I personally can’t wait to serve these up to a carnivorous Central Florida crew this summer and watch their heads spin.
I’m making them again? 10/10 absolutely and with gusto, but perhaps with a few tweaks. There’s always leftover cooked rice and grains in our house, so I’d be interested in swapping out the quinoa. The only vegetable you actually see in the patty is the carrot, and I’m curious what else would work: maybe sweet potato, roasted in the same manner, plus some mushrooms. In the Superiority Burger Cookbook there’s also a recipe for Special Sauce that contains within itself two micro-recipes for Roasted Tomatoes and Chickpea Mayo. I’ve had it, and it’s excellent, but a burger that takes two hours to prep demands a speedy smear with maximum flavor. So, let’s make one!
Part II: The 120-second everything sauce recipe
[This is where we’d put the paywall, if we were charging for this one.]
Sauce is precious, a crucial component of every cuisine. A sauce can add creaminess, sweetness, spiciness, herbaceousness, or whatever-ness you desire. If you ever need to breathe life into a dish, the secret is sauce.
This “dump it all in the blender and go” recipe is super speedy and features some of my favorite plant-based pantry essentials; it goes well on anything from burgers to grilled veggies. It’s smoky, slightly sweet, and extremely addictive thanks to healthy doses of sun-dried tomatoes and nutritional yeast. Both of these are rich in glutamate, the substance responsible for the taste sensation known as umami. The yeast, along with a block of silken tofu, kicks up the protein content.
To those who say veggies can’t be filling or satisfying, I say this is a sauce to turn a side dish into a main dish. Just add grain and some crunch. Take roasted broccoli, for example: Smear the sauce onto a plate, top with rice (or farro or couscous), add that broccoli, and finish it off with chopped nuts or toasted seeds. Other ways to eat it: Swipe it on a veggie burger, BLT, or grilled corn; or use it as a dressing for potato salad. This sauce is spruced up and ready to be your summer fling, but good luck forgetting about her afterwards.
Smoky Tofu Special Sauce
Yield: 1 1/2 cups
Ingredients
1 12-ounce block silken tofu
½ cup nutritional yeast
1/4 cup (about 5) oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained
1 tablespoon adobo sauce, from 1 can of chipotles in adobo
2 tablespoons dill pickle juice
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
Procedure
Blitz all the ingredients in a high-powered blender until smooth and spreadable, 30 to 60 seconds. If it seems too thick, add water 1 tablespoon at a time until it reaches a mayo-like consistency.
Taste and adjust according to your preferences. The recommended 1 tablespoon adobo sauce will hit mild-medium heat. Upping to 2 tablespoons ratchets the spice up to medium-hot. You can also add whole chipotle if you’re really going for it. Prefer something sweeter? Add another tablespoon of maple syrup.
Transfer any leftovers to a jar or reusable container and store in the fridge for up to 1 week.
Notes and Substitutions
I used Mori-Nu Organic Silken Tofu
No maple syrup? Use for honey or agave nectar.
Any pickle brine works (and cuts down on kitchen waste!), but lemon juice, lime juice, or white vinegar will work. We’re just looking to add acidity.
An equal weight of mayonnaise or Greek yogurt can be substituted for the silken tofu.
Other welcome additions to flavor-country: capers, relish, grated garlic
Throw in herbs if you’ve got them. Anything tender-stemmed like cilantro, parsley, or dill would work great.