These vegetarian Broccoli Quinoa Cakes can be made in 30 minutes flat & are a delicious healthy meal that your whole family will love! Serve them up with Simple Sauteed Greens or a beautiful Mediterranean Chard Salad and top them with your favorite sauce! Easy Peasy!
Do not try to save the world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then, will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue.- Martha Postlewaite
Here’s an easy healthy recipe for Broccoli Cakes that are made with simple ingredients you probably have on hand. It’s a quick and healthy nutritious meal that really satisfies! Filling yet light, I love these best served with a generous side of salad or simple sauteed greens.
If you’de like to add a flavorful sauce, the possibilities are endless here and I’ll list a variety of options in the recipe notes. Here I’ve served them with this Vegan Cilantro Crema that I had from leftover tacos.
Also, I intentionally left the seasonings pretty basic here, to make them easy and accessible- and I know you will find ways to jazz these up to your liking.
Broccoli Quinoa Cakes! |30-sec video
To get this started, cook 1/2 cup quinoa in 1 cup water. This will take about 15 minutes.
While the quinoa is cooking, steam 8-10 ounces of broccoli florets, which is about 4-5 cups, packed tight.
***The key to this recipe is NOT overcooking the broccoli (you want it al dente) and patting it dry.
Add the steamed broccoli (pat it dry), scallions, seasonings, egg, cheese and quinoa to the food processor. Pulse until combined. Add almond flour or bread crumbs to bind.
You’ll end up with a coarse mixture that can be formed into patties.
It should look like this! A dry, sticky mix.
Form patties with damp hands. If they feel wet, you could coat in bread crumbs, but I don’t usually need the bread crumbs.
Sear the broccoli cakes up in a well-oiled skillet over medium-low heat.
FYI: If you don’t fiddle with them, they won’t stick, naturally releasing from the pan as they form a crust.
Cook them until slightly puffed and store in a warm oven until ready to serve.
At this point, the Broccoli Cakes can be refrigerated and reheated for lunches.
So as you can see I did not have to coat the broccoli cakes in flour or bread crumbs.
Using a metal spatula helps here (it has a thinner edge) as well as being patient, letting them release themselves from the pan as they from the crust, very gently flipping.
The crispy quinoa edges add great texture! Feel free to add a sauce (see notes) or leave them plain!
Let us know what you think of these Broccoli Cakes. I’ve made several batches this week and all have quickly disappeared. Always a good sign. 😉
More recipes you may like:
- Broccoli Stir Fry
- Broccoli Quinoa Cakes!
- Jalapeño Broccoli & Cheddar Soup (Vegan)
- Creamy Vegan Broccoli Salad
- Garlic Chili Tofu with Sesame Broccolini
- Broccoli Manicotti with Burrata
Have a lovely weekend.
Sylvia
Broccoli Cakes
- Prep Time: 20
- Cook Time: 10
- Total Time: 30 minutes
- Yield: 4 patties
- Category: main, vegetarain
- Method: stove top
- Cuisine: American
- Diet: Vegetarian
Description
These vegetarian Broccoli Quinoa Cakes can be made in 30 minutes & are a delicious healthy meal that your whole family will love!
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup uncooked quinoa (or sub 1 1/2 cups cooked quinoa)
- 4–5 cups fresh broccoli florets (8 ounces)
- 1 scallion, diced
- 1/4 chopped herbs- basil, dill, Italian parsley, or cilantro (use what you have)
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 1 garlic clove, finely minced (or 1/2 teaspoon granulated garlic)
- 1/4 cup almond flour (or use bread crumbs), more as needed
- 1/2 cup grated cheese (cheddar, jack, mozzarella or vegan cheese)
- 2–3 tablespoons oil for searing.
Instructions
- Cook Quinoa: Rinse quinoa in a fine-mesh strainer. Drain. Bring quinoa and 1 cup water to boil in a very small pot, cover, lower heat to low and simmer 10-12 minutes until tender and all the water is gone. Turn off heat, let stand 5 minutes covered.
- Steam broccoli: While cooking the quinoa, steam the broccoli until tender, being careful not to overcook. Drain well, let cool, and pat dry. (It is imperative that broccoli is not overcooked and is patted dry in order for cakes to stick together.)
- Combine and Pulse: Place broccoli, scallions, cooked quinoa, egg, salt, pepper, garlic, and cheese into a food processor and pulse repeatedly until finely ground. Pulse in the almond flour, mixing in well. The mixture should easily mound on a spoon and just be slightly sticky, easily forming a patty. If the mixture seems very wet, continue adding almond flour a tablespoon at a time until manageable. With damp hands, Form 4 large patties, pressing them together. You shouldn’t need to coat these in flour or breadcrumbs- but if they feel very wet, feel free to.
- Sear: Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat. Carefully place patties in the skillet, lowering heat to medium-low or low — resisting the temptation to move or fiddle with them. As they form the deep golden crust, they will naturally release themselves from the pan, and not stick- making flipping so much easier. (I like to use a thin metal spatula here. Rubber spatulas have thicker edges, much harder to get under delicate things.) Flip when golden and releasing, about 5 minutes. Pan-sear the other side until slightly puffed in the center (indicating the egg is cooked through) lowering heat more if need be. You can also finish cooking these through in 350F oven after pan-searing if they are getting too dark on the stovetop.
- SERVE: At this point, you could refrigerate if making ahead, and reheat down the road. Or keep in a warm oven until serving. Serve with a slaw, side salad or sauteed greens. Top with a flavorful sauce if you like (see options in notes).
Notes
Feel free to sub 1 1/2 cups cooked short-grain brown rice for the quinoa.
Making sure the steamed broccoli is as dry as possible (pat it dry) will allow you to use less flour or bread crumbs. The first time I made this, I did not pat dry the broccoli, and it needed 1/2 cup almond flour. The second time, I patted the broccoli dry, and only needed 1/4 cup flour, if that.
Make sure the quinoa is dry and not watery.
Pick a sauce to serve these!
Keywords: broccoli patties, broccoli quinoa patties, broccoli cakes, broccoli quinoa cakes, broccoli burgers,
Absolutely scrumptious! Served it with your tzaziki sauce. Yum!
★★★★★
Sounds like a great combo!
Had a last minute vegetarian add-on to a dinner party of carnivores; Kobe steak was the main course. Knowing that my 1 guest would be resigned to a salad & baked potato if I didn’t figure something out,, I hit the net in search of veggie options, and found this. Everything came together easily, fried perfectly, and finished product was a platter of delightful little patties that surprisingly, everyone dove into (thinking they were appetizers) and gobbled up, carnivores and herbivore alike. I will definitely save this and plan on making again! May even try them as a meat(less)ball. That good!!! Thank you!
★★★★★
Great to hear Angel!
I never commented on a recipe before but I read through the comments here and I thought I’d share another perspective.
I absolutely loved these cakes. I followed the recipe, pat the broccoli dry and didn’t need more almond flour. I put 2 scallions instead of one and added 3 cloves of garlic instead of 1/2 tsp minced because my family and I like garlic, and even still it wasn’t overpowering at all.
I used an ice cream scoop to put the mixture on the frying pan and flattened them a little bit. I fried them in olive oil on medium low, 5 minutes on each side without touching them (this was the hardest part!) and it worked completely fine.
They didn’t crumble, they didn’t fall apart, they didn’t burn, I didn’t need breadcrumbs on them. They’re soft inside like a falafel.
I didn’t find the recipe time consuming and literally used one pot for the quinoa, one pot to steam the broccoli, one blender and one frying pan.
I actually went ahead and made the sautéed greens recipe the author suggested to pair with the cakes and it was wonderful. Just to offer another experience. Thanks for the recipe, definitely a keeper!
★★★★★
Thanks so much! Really appreciate it- some folks have really struggled with this one and for the life of me, I jsut can’t figure out why- it turns out for me too. So appreciate you sharing.
Delicious! I did the laziest possible version of these…forgot to dry the broccoli, and just used a potato masher instead of a food processor. I also didn’t have any cheese and didn’t bother trying to come up with a substitute. Still tasted great. Crumbled a bit, a smaller patty worked better. Would be great with some fresh dill and lemon zest in there.
★★★★★
Great to hear!
The garlic and scallions overpowered taste. Though everything was so dry it was hard to mix, they still did not stick together. Not recommended 😕
★★
Sorry Phyllis-Did you use an egg and a food processor?
These burgers fell apart despite that I was gentle and followed the recipe. So I dumped them back in a bowl added 1/4 cup of all purpose flour and 1 more egg and made 7 smaller burgers. They seem to be holding together now.
★★★
My dad who is the meat and potatoes type made these for me for Easter dinner because I eat vegetarian/mostly vegan, so that was pretty special! We had a fully vegetarian dinner which is maybe a first for our family as a holiday meal! He hasn’t really made too many vegetarian entree recipes but this was a big hit! He said it was kind of a lot of steps but not too hard 😉 He didn’t use a food processor, just chopped the broccoli up with a knife, there were some marble size chunks of broccoli in our version which I really liked.
These had a very good taste, re-heated up as leftovers super well and I am excited to try making these myself. I will try a vegan version with a flax egg and vegan cheese 🙂 Thank you for this tasty recipe!
★★★★★
Please clarify step 3. I’m only seeing dashes. Thank you.
it’s just a separator.
I wasn’t a big fan of the taste. The garlic overpowered everything else. I did the exact steps instructed and they would crumble when I tried to flip them and they would stick to the pan even though I used oil on the pan. They also did not cook all the way even when they were almost to a burnt color on either sides, it was still soft and not cooked inside. Would not recommend because I not only did I not enjoy the taste, but it was very time consuming. When I say time consuming it took a while to find the ingredients, measure everything, put them on the pan and wait 5 minutes per side. Then after that, the clean up process was very time consuming because I had to clean the blender, the measuring cups, my counter, and much more. Very disappointed. Once again I would not recommend this to anyone (including kids) unless they have the time, like raw broccoli cake, and especially love garlic.
★
Sorry Nelly- maybe not for everyone.
I could not get these to cook through. First my batter was quite wet but added almond flour to get them formal-able but jeez could not get them cooked. Such a mess. Tried baking some and that also took forever. Do not understand. I followed the recipe to a T
Hey Amy- sorry about that. When you say you couldn’t get them to cook through, do you mean they fell apart, or something else? Sorry just trying to get a clearer picture here! Did you use a food processor? Just curious. 😉
Inedible, after nearly 2 hrs of effort. Mushy texture in the middle. I tried making some smaller fritter sized versions, but it’s all going in the trash. Thank goodness for frozen pizza.
★
Oh dear. Were they cooked all the way through? Sorry sounds like I’ll have to remake this one.
Excellent.
★★★★★
Turned out good!
★★★★★
Can I skip the eggs? What can I put instead?
You could try a flax egg- but I haven’t personally tried this so not sure if it would bind?
I made it and my kids and I loved them
very good and easy to make
★★★★★
I tried this recipe and the children just loved it! My child’s friend who hates broccoli gorged them and made me promise I send this recipe to her mom. Thank you Sylvia!
★★★★★
Can I skip the eggs? What can I put instead
The eggs help bind the recipe here. I haven’t tried experimenting without it, so don’t want to lead you astray here. I suppose you could try flax eggs?
Delicious and I was amazed at how well they held together. I added some wild garlic leaves, which is growing locally now. Will definitely be making them again.
★★★★★
Made this tonight – I’ve recently become the designated cook, since I’m not currently working – and I prefer to eat vegetarian. My husband, a committed carnivore, has been cautiously supportive, a little skeptical, and I am pleased to say that this recipe went down a treat. Bookmarked to make again. I did use plain flour, as I had no almond, but everything else was as directed. Patted the broccoli dry with a teatowel (dishtowel?) and also left it to dry off for a few minutes. Served with garlic aioli, which covers a myriad of mistakes if required!
★★★★★
Great to hear and glad you enjoyed.
Hi Sylvia, is it possible to make the broccoli cakes in the oven instead? I want to make many (over 20) so baking in a pan seems too much effort
I havn’t tried baking them- so not sure here. You may have to test one?
I tried yesterday, and the outccome was even better than baked in a pan! 20 minutes at 180 degrees Celius!
Forgot to press 5 stars. Thanks.
★★★★★