Recipe Review: Vegan Beet Burgers

In the Halloween menu plan that I posted I included a beet burger recipe from the Post Punk Kitchen. They were right, the beet does make the resulting patties look very "authentic". I made some pretty significant changes though that I thought I would share. The biggest one is that I didn't have any cooked rice so I used cooked oatmeal, which is much faster.

Here is roughly what I used:

1 cup uncooked lentils cooked and drained
1 cup uncooked oatmeal cooked in 1 1/2 cups water
3 to 4 small beets, grated
4 tbsp. finely chopped onions
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp fennel
salt and pepper to taste

I don't have a food processor so I just mixed all of these ingredients together and then used an immersion blender to puree it very slightly. I let the mixture sit in the refrigerator for about an hour. When it was time to prepare the burgers I followed Isa's advice and made very large burgers and cooked them for a full 6 minutes on each side.

Beet burgers with sweet potato fries

I was really happy with how these burgers turned out, and in fact they are making a repeat appearance on this week's menu plan. I liked using oatmeal because it is quicker, and also very sticky so I think it helped the patties hold together without any egg. The fennel taste came through quite strongly, and I realized I am not a big fan of fennel. I will probably change the spices up a bit when I make them again on Thursday.

These patties were also relatively quick to make and the ingredients are very inexpensive, especially if you are buying beets in season (and at the time of writing it is beet season). The most time consuming parts of the process are grating the beets and cooking them on the stove. If you own a food processor, the grating part is no problem at all, and even without a food processor I would estimate it took me 15 to 20 minutes to grate the necessary beets. I made these patties on the stove because I wanted the outside to be slightly charred a la a hamburger, but generally I think it is much easier to make veggie burgers in the oven. I will try the oven method on Thursday and let you know how it turns out.


All in all, I would highly recommend this recipe! Thank you Post Punk Kitchen

Polenta Bowl

Kind of like a teriyaki bowl, or maybe a soba bowl, but this is a polenta bowl. As opposed to rice or noodles, the base of this bowl is polenta. Shaun and I are WWOOFing at Pine Meadow Farm and are learning how to eat very seasonally. In addition to produce Pine Meadow has goat's milk, eggs, and staples such as beans and grains. So right now we are eating a lot of beans, grains, lettuce (not featured in this recipe) and beet thinnings. Garden tip: You plant beet seeds in very dense rows and then pull most of them out so the healthiest can grow to full size, but you can still eat the greens.

You can only eat so much beans and rice, so we started looking for another grain we could use. We arrived at corn.Expect more bean related posts in the future...

OK here are the components of the bowl:

Polenta
Kidney Beans
Sauteed Beet Greens

For the polenta
Polenta is super quick and easy. We have been eating a lot of it on the farm since it is so much faster than rice. When making rice you usually use a two parts water to one part rice. With polenta it's four parts liquid to one part corn meal. I combine four cups of liquid (some combination of water, broth and/or milk) with one cup of corn meal, stir, and let simmer on low stirring occasionally to frequently for five to ten minutes. Or until the mixture looks thick and porridge like. I use normal corn meal, sometimes fine grind, sometimes corse grind depending on what I have. While on the farm I have been using two cups of goat milk and two cups of water for the liquid. At home (where goat milk is in much shorter supply) I usually use four cups of vegetable broth and then a little half and half or a tablespoon of butter added at the end.

For the Beans
I had leftover beans... They had no seasoning what so ever, so they were pretty bland. For this preparation I used two cups of cooked kidney beans and tossed them with a quarter cup of balsamic vinaigrette.

For the beet greens
Take all of the beet thinnings you have, or remove the tops of one large bunch of beets and use the root for something else. I might suggest beet feta gratin. Saute the greens and one or two minced cloves of garlic in about 1 tbsp of olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To prepare the bowl
For each bowl I used one cup of polenta, 1/2 cup of beans, and 1/4 of the available greens. I thought the assembled bowls were quite visually appealing.