Craving a burger and a salad? This veggie burger bowl gives you the best of both worlds. Built with homemade veggie burgers, crisp greens, classic burger toppings, and a creamy vegan burger sauce, it’s a light but satisfying meal packed with plant-based protein. This deconstructed, bunless burger salad is easy to prep, endlessly customizable, and perfect for quick lunches or weeknight dinners.
It's a burger! It's a salad! It's a burger in a bowl!
Friends, come on a journey with me. It's dinner time. Or lunchtime—you decide. You're kind of in the mood for a burger, but you're mostly feeling salad vibes. You want to know the solution? It's a Veggie Burger Bowl!
Hear me out. I love a burger with a bun as much as the next Nutrition Lady (these spicy, veggie packed black bean burgers are my personal fave), but sometimes veggie burgers have a lot of breadcrumbs or oats or other things to bind them together, so you're taking a kinda bready burger and putting it between more bread and it's just too much, ya know?
Seriously, this bunless burger bowl is one of my favorite things to eat, rivaled only by our delicious vegetarian burrito bowls, and it takes only a few minutes to throw everything together for a simple, delicious, and healthy meal. Pile your bowl high with your favorite burger toppings, drizzle withour out of this world vegan burger sauce, and you are good to go.
Let's do this!
Let's make veggie burger bowls together!
This one is so ridiculously simple, but nevertheless let's walk through it together. You'll find specific quantities and more detailed instructions in the printable recipe card at the end of this post.
Step 1: put everything in a bowl
This is where we layer in all of our favorite burger toppings. I'm going in there with HNL community-fave spicy pickled red onions, but you know our quick-pickled red cabbage would also be fab.
Also, lettuce and tomatoes, obviously. Plus quinoa for a bit of heft, tiny pickles because they're ridiculously cute and tasty, and avocado because why not?
Step 2: drizzle with burger sauce
We're whisking together an easy and delicious tahini-based vegan burger sauce. It's so good, I could pretty much drink it.
That's it! You're done!
Veggie Burger Bowl – Easy Bunless Burger Salad with Vegan Sauce
Ingredients
Veggie Burger in a Bowl
- 4 cups shredded lettuce
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes halved
- 2 large avocados diced
- 1 cup spicy pickled onions
- ½ cup cornichons chopped if you like
- 4 veggie burger patties diced up or crumbled
Vegan Burger Sauce
- ½ cup tahini paste
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 tablespoon fresh dill or 1 teaspoon dried
- 2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
- salt and pepper
- ¼ cup water
Instructions
- To make vegan burger sauce, whisk together tahini, garlic, lemon juice, dill, salt, and pepper. Whisk in enough water to thin the sauce to a pourable consistency.½ cup tahini paste, 1 clove garlic, 1 tablespoon fresh dill, 2 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice, salt and pepper, ¼ cup water
- To make Veggie Burger Bowls, layer burger fixings into individual salad bowls.4 cups shredded lettuce, 1 pint cherry tomatoes, 2 large avocados, 1 cup spicy pickled onions, ½ cup cornichons
- Top with crumbled veggie burger patties, and drizzle with vegan burger sauce.4 veggie burger patties
Notes
- Nutrition values are an estimate only and will change depending on type of veggie burger used.
- You can definitely prep all of the components in advance, but I recommend assembling the bowls more or less at the last minute.
- Having said that, I do think that these bowls makes a delicious packed lunch, and as long as you keep the wet ingredients (like pickled onions and burger sauce) off until it's time to serve, they'll last for a few days pre-packed in the fridge in an air-tight container.
Nutrition
Heather says
I love this idea, both for a veggie burger or a meat burger. I just can’t fit a burger with all the fixings in a bun inmy mouth and end up eating it with a knife and fork, skipping most of the bun anyway. Maybe a burger bowl and a small slice of really chewy heavy bread on the side will be my new thing.
Emma says
Burger bowl, YES! All the burger-y taste without the sluggish feeling after. So happy I found this in your archives 🙂
Gingerbread Jenn says
I really like the idea of the burger without all the stodgy bun, it looks so quick and simple to make too! Thank you for the inspo 🙂
themuffinmyth says
Thanks Jenn! It's my favourite way to eat burgers these days. And that tomato vinaigrette is really delish 🙂
agentjustyna says
okay, this is what genius looks like. simple and effective 😉
themuffinmyth says
Why thank you! I think so too 🙂
kellie@foodtoglow says
I do like this idea, Katie. So simple, but I'm betting it is the kind of thing that becomes a regular, espesh if slapping the burger between a bun is too much stodge. Certainly there are restaurants and burger chains that leave off the bun and give you more salad so you are bang on trend!
themuffinmyth says
It's just so easy to throw together! And the burger can be warm or cold, so it literally takes no time, plus is such a canvass for adventure. I'm sure this won't be the last burger bowl to grace these pages!