Vegan Katsu Pumpkin Burger

Approx. time to make: 40-45 minutes (including time to make homemade Katsu curry sauce) or 20-25 minutes (if you are using pre-bought Katsu curry sauce).

Serves: 4

Ingredients

-4 wedges of pumpkin (thinly sliced into a patty size, large enough to fit into a burger bun)

-4 burger buns (I used homemade beetroot burger bun)

-90g breadcrumbs

-Vegetable oil for deep-fat frying

-Katsu curry sauce

For the Katsu curry sauce

-1 onion chopped

-2 large carrots chopped

-1 bay leaf

-2 crushed garlic cloves

-1 teaspoon turmeric powder

-375ml (Oxo) meat-free chicken flavour stock or vegetable stock

-2 tablespoons mild curry powder

Method

-Cut your pumpkin into relatively thin slices of pumpkin (big enough to sit inside your bread buns).

-Steam the pumpkin until it has softened (but still firm enough to hold in shape). It took around 15 minutes for my pumpkin to be the consistency I wanted.

-In the meanwhile, in a small saucepan over a medium heat, cook the onion in a tablespoon of oil till translucent.

-Add carrots, turmeric, garlic and a bay leaf to the pan. Make sure to coat the onion and carrots evenly in the turmeric to avoid catching on the bottom of the pan.

-Pour in the stock and the curry powder and stir. Leave over the heat for roughly 10-15 minutes.

-Take off the heat and blend. The carrots and onion blended should have thickened the sauce but if you would prefer the katsu sauce to be thicker you could add in some cornflour.

-Have a plate at hand with the breadcrumbs on and a clean plate aside for the coated pumpkin. Dip each pumpkin slice into the blended katsu sauce and then coat in the breadcrumbs and set aside ready to fry.

-In a deep fat fryer or a shallow oil pan, fry the breaded pumpkin burgers until golden. This usually takes 5 minutes per pumpkin burger.

-Transfer the burgers into your bread buns and with the leftover Katsu sauce, spoon over your preferred amount over the burger.

-Enjoy!