The easiest way to turn a sweet potato into a burger

ers, There and then are there veggie are burg- vegetable burgers. What’s the difference? To my mind, it’s this: A veggie burger is a patty made of a carefully concocted blend that typically includes beans, grains, various flavorings and a binder. A vegetable burger, on the other hand, is just what it sounds like: a vegetable on a bun.

In his book “Green Burgers” (Hardie Grant, 2017), Swedish cook-author Martin Nordin covers both categories, and his ideas are captivating. This is someone who clearly takes vegetarian burgers seriously, with multicomponent recipes that include inventive sauces, lots of textures and garnishes galore. For one, he deep-fries a mixture of king oyster mushrooms, dried shiitakes and more, then combines them on buns with a kimchi made from zucchini.

I was after something a little simpler, and I couldn’t stop returning to his idea of salt-baked sweet potatoes. The salt pulls out enough moisture so that when you peel back the skin and scoop the flesh out of each one in one piece, it holds together enough to be eaten between soft hamburger buns. The other key is a pun- gent sauce, made from black garlic, vinegar, spices and charred scallion tops. It tastes like the best (vegan) Worcestershire sauce ever. You brush it on the thick “patties” and top them with a very generous amount of crumbled feta, scallion whites and fresh oregano.

When you take a bite, the first surprise is that the sweet potato doesn’t squish out the way so many veggie burgers do. The second is the interplay of flavors. If you’re like me, you’ll taste, inhale - and start thinking about when to make these again. And again.