
Holy-
Balls, buckets, crap, guacamole, moley, Spicolli, sheet man! These burgers are AMAZING!
I made Veggie burgers...me..that's right! I'm really getting over being skeptical of this healthy eating stuff and jumping right in huh?
So it kinda happened by accident. I bought lentils (on purpose)-but I jacked up cooking them...b/c well, I kinda forgot I was cooking them..so they overcooked..turned to mush. Boo. I didn't want to throw them out, but I didn't want to eat them as they were. They were basically half perfect and half mush. Product of my forgetting them and forgetting to stir them so they'd all cook evenly I guess. *shrugs*
Burgers popped into my head...but how does someone MAKE a veggie burger? I don't even BUY them for fear they will suck. What? It's the truth! So I looked through recipes online and there is no 'set' recipe. Just make them stick together. Dredge them, don't dredge them. Beans, herbs, cumin, onions, lentils..it's a pretty varied thing. I can do this-after all, I have mushy lentils!
My messed up lentils were 1 cup of brown lentils cooked in 2 cups of beef broth (from a roast my Dad made earlier in the week) and 2 cups of water...so my lentils (albeit mush) had a nice beefy flavor already.
I put them in a pan and let them cool and added the following-
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 zucchini, shredded and squeezed dry
I cooked the onion and zuc in about a Tablespoon of olive oil until they were just getting soft-
2 eggs-beaten
1/4 cup unseasoned breadcrumbs
1/4 cup wheat bran
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 t cumin
I mixed it up and molded the burgers with a 4 inch egg ring onto waxed paper and into the freezer. It made 7 burgers...
there are 6 in the freezer and one in my belly. I fried it in a pan with butter-what? who said that? I did...butter...seriously..a little to fry a burger won't hurt too bad! I put the burger on the 100% whole wheat bun (there's that healthy monster again) w/a healthy dose of Miracle Whip *snickers*, some spicy mustard, and some lettuce-for crunch.
SO good. Seriously...alot of recipes coated their burgers in breadcrumbs, but I LOVED the crunchy cheese/lentils 'coating' it got from pan frying it.
Will I give up beef? No...but are these a GREAT alternative? Yes, hells yes!
Comments
And, amen - a little butter never hurt anything! :)