Recipe 15- Lentil Chia Burger
I have to start off this recipe by saying I was VERY intimitdated by this recipe, but excited to try something new. A few of the ingredients were new to me and I have never cooked a lentil.
Chef Michael Smith has recently been touring the globe as the 'lentil hunter'.
I have been following his journey through social media and was intrigued to try lentils. Lucky enough for me there was a recipe in the cookbook that I could use.
For the majority of these recipes I haven't had much trouble finding ingredients, but for this recipe, it took me 3 days and 4 different stores to find one item. I will get to that later.
So to start off the recipe it says to cook your green lentils first. Into the pot went the water and green lentils. After about 15-20 minutes they were tender and soft. They had a nice aroma and the taste was slightly peppery, to me at least.
Next was sauteing my mushrooms, garlic and onions. The smell of these three are just the best!
I went a little out there with my mushroom choice. Unfortunately I don't know the names of the ones that came in the pre-packed mix I picked up. Maybe you guys can help me out, if you recognize any of these, leave me a comment!
The recipe says to let these hang out in the pan for a long time. They go from dry to wet and then back to a drier state after being in the pan. After this they go into the food processor or in my case.. the blender. I really need to get a food processor, as I learned YET again... the blender is not the best for processing food.... p.s- no wooden spoons were harmed in this recipe.
I gave my mushrooms a quick spin around because the next ingredients were going to make the mixture thicken up and I wanted to make sure the mushrooms were well .... blended -_-
Into the blender went the flavors that really tie this burger together!
Into the blender goes soy sauce, peanut butter or any other nut butter you choose, chia seeds, thyme, bread crumbs and soy bean paste. Now here is the sneaky ingredient that I could not find for the life of me!
-Sort of off topic moment here-
I went to 4 different grocery stores and sent out a plea via Facebook looking for help. It was suggested that I could find the soybean paste in an Asian food market. Saturday morning bright and early I headed towards the closest one to us. On the way I thought maybe the "Superstore" which is a chain of Loblaws would have it, they have a large international food section. Sure enough... after days literally of searching, there it WAS! Hallelujah!
So if I didn't have enough trouble finding this bean paste, I get to the checkout and my debit card doesn't work! My chip card needed replacing! Of ALL the times it could of happened,
it HAD TO BE NOW!
Don't worry... I just grabbed it and bolted out of the store...
JUST KIDDING!!!!! I had cash on me and paid AND STILL left with a huge smile on my face knowing I could complete this recipe :)
-the end of the off topic moment-
Anyways..... So I blended my ingredients and then put the paste like mixture into a mixing bowl.
Next to be mixed in is the lentils that have already been cooked.
Now I can imagine that YOU are thinking the exact thing I was thinking when I looked into my mixing bowl.... ummm that looks like...... ?
Yes I know, but after the grated sweet potato gets mixed in, it looks a lot less.... brown?
At this point the whole mix is left to sit and rest for 15 minutes. The chia seeds that I added earlier draw the water from the mixture let it dry out slightly. I was really impressed by this. When I mixed the sweet potato in by hand the whole mixture was stuck to my hands. But after 15 minutes of resting the mixture was slightly tacky, but I was able to form patties quite nicely.
15 minutes of rest time will give you lots of time to tidy up the kitchen. I wish I would of taken a picture to document how messy my kitchen got LOL!
I formed 9 patties from the mixture. The recipe says 10 so I figured I was doing alright on eyeballing the size of the patties.
I decided to use the pan frying method to cook the burgers. Chef Michael suggests pan fry, oven baked or grilled on the BBQ.
My pan frying gave the burgers some great color, but...... this was my slight dissapointment..
the inside was still slightly mushy. Now after the fact, I determined that maybe cooking them in the oven or grill may of been a better choice, to get the dry even heat.
I was able to freeze 5 of the burgers and will try them on my BBQ once the snow melts!
Now I don't want anyone to be discouraged by this recipe. The flavor of these burgers were OUTSTANDING considering they are completely veggie burgers. I think the error in this one may of been more on my end then the recipes.
Please let me know if you have made these burgers or plan on making them!
I hope to give these another try with my frozen leftover burgers.
I had my burger with Recipe 14- Mediterranean Chickpea, tomato & cucumber salad.
As always my compliments to the chef and cheers to you, my friends!
Please be sure to follow Chef Michael's lentil traveling journeys across the globe, hes been posting beautiful pictures and information along the way!
http://chefmichaelsmith.com/lentils/love-your-lentils/
https://www.facebook.com/chef.michael.smith
You can also find me here:
https://twitter.com/Leslie1669
https://www.facebook.com/100recipesin52
http://instagram.com/100recipes52weeks
See you all again this week with Recipes 16 & 17
Beef Pot Roast with Aromatic Vegetable gravy & Barley Asparagus Risotto
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