Thursday, January 13, 2011

Beetroot and zucchini burgers

Hello :) In our kitchen we keep a magazine folder full of recipe cut out from various newspapers/magazines which we hope to make sometime. Well the other night I was browsing and sorting through it and came across a recipe for beetroot and zucchini burgers, which I decided to try out for lunch today.

Ingredients:
Beetroot and zucchini burgers (makes 8, serves 4)
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, chopped finely
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 large beetroot, grated
2 zucchini, grated
1 large carrot, grated
100g (about 4 slices) wholemeal bread, crust removed
400g canned chickpeas, rinsed, drained
3 tablespoons crunchy peanut butter
1 egg yolk
3 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsely
Yoghurt sauce
350g plain yoghurt
1/2 cucumber, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, crushed
lemon wedges, to serve

Directions:
Heat about 1 tablespoon oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Saute onion and garlic for 4-5 minutes or until softened. Add grated vegetables and cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes until wilted. Drain off any liquid (and trust me, there is a lot!). Place bread, chickpeas, peanut butter and egg yolk (I used 2 eggs because our food processor is quite small) in a food processor and pulse to combine. Transfer mixture to a bowl and stir through grated vegetables and parsley. Form mixture into 8 patties and chill for 30 minutes (or up to 24 hours).

Heat remaining oil in a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and cook burgers, in batches if necessary for about 2-3 minutes each side until golden. Make a quick sauce by combining yoghurt, a drizzle of olive oil, cucumber and crushed garlic. Serve burgers with yoghurt sauce.

I had two burgers with spinach leaves, broccolini, lemon wedges and some of the yoghurt sauce (I didn't make all of it). My daily dose of vegetables in one plate...
These tasted really yummy and are exceptionally healthy... (don't let the colour turn you off!) Initially they were a bit 'sticky' but after cooking and browning them slightly they held together quite well. The real test was my sister though, a usual fussy eater but after taking a bite she said 'Mmmm quite nice'. The  only downside to this recipe though is the mess and washing up involved! And remember: beetroot stains!!

What do you think? Have you ever tried making vege burgers?

Hannah x

2 comments:

  1. These look so yummy! My sister taught me how to make Chickpea Patties. First time I've ever used a food processor!

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  2. Yeah, I made some sweet potato and chickpea patties the other day, in order to entice th boy to eat more veggies (we're trialing meat-free Mondays)
    We don't have a food processor, but we do have a pretty awesome blender, so I put batches of the cooked sweet potato and chick pea in. As it wasn't working so well, I added some water to help get it to a blending consistancy. I think I added too much, as they were hard to shape, but I kept going.

    They were shallow fried, so I popped the first batch into the few cm of bubbling oil, put the lid on and went to shape the rest of the batch. When I came back the patties had "Melted" into the canola, into one giant amount of oily mushy sweet potatato mess! I had to package that up and chuck it. Lucky I had some left, so I just dry dried them, but really it was like frying mashed potatoes!

    Note to self, buy a food processor

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