Hello and welcome to Freshly Served, the healthy vegan cooking show.
I’m Heather and tonight we are gonna be making some Lentil burgers.
Now iron and folic acids are two nutrients that their riches sources are found in an
animal product so as vegans it’s not hard to get them but you just have to know which
foods contain those nutrients so you can get enough.
Lentils are a food that has both of them and interestingly enough iron and folic acid both
help to build the red blood cells in your body.
They just work on different parts of the red blood cell so eating them together means that
you’re gonna have a stronger building function from both of them.
So what we’re gonna do is start by I have already cooked my lentils.
They’re fully cooked back here.
They don’t take too long to cook, they’re about 30 minutes and you just wanna make sure
that you don’t cook them with any salt otherwise they won’t soften up properly.
And I’ve used some brown lentils; brown lentils break apart more than other types.
You can see here that they are really nice and soft and starting to fall apart.
If you use another type of lentils you won’t get the same texture and it will be more difficult
to use in this veggie burger so brown lentils are the perfect one to use for a veggie burger
or like a meat ball or something like that.
In this big bowl here I have some grated carrots and some dice onion, for those of you who
know me you know that grating is one of my least favorite task so I’ve actually grated
these carrots in a food processor when I’m doing a large quantity of grating I use my
food processor.
If you have one great, if not the grater works just fine.
So I’m going to make sure there’s no water really left on these lentils so I’ll just
toss them right in there.
Well I have this tendency to when I’m making veggie burgers I usually make more than what
we need and this is gonna make a lot of veggie burgers.
So if there’s only two of you, I highly recommend having this recipe and I’ll probably
put directions in the ingredients in the recipe online.
Ok!
So mix these things together, we’ve got carrots, we’ve got onion, we’ve got lentils
and then what you’re gonna do to help this to stick together is just add a bit of flour.
I’m using whole wheat you can use any type of flour, brown rice, spelt flour, whatever
you like.
And I’ve got about a quarter cup, not too important how much you use, it’s just gonna
help things stick together.
So after saying measuring is not important I look at my mix and realize I just didn’t
have enough flour and I’ve added another half cup so a total of three quarters of a
cup.
I miss judge base on the massive amount of food that I put in this bowl and anyway I
stick by that measuring is not so important but looking at your – what your making and
making sure that the ratios are working, that’s what’s important.
So when you take your batter and that’s gonna be a pretty big burger, when you squish
it together, you should be getting like a patty so if you’re not getting that, add
a little bit more flour or half a more cup of flour that’s what I did.
I think the problem is the food processing of my carrots they didn’t grate as fine
in the food processor as they did when I grated them by hand and so there’s a benefit of
grating them by hand and also the reason why you know different ingredients will take different
ratios so always look at what your making and think about it, see if it’s working.
Once you get that texture right, it’s time to add the spices and I’m gonna use some
cumin.
Lentils can take a lot of spice, they are very earthy flavor and so adding spice can
live en them up.
It’s gonna make all the difference on this recipe.
That was some coriander, some cayenne, some black pepper and some sea salt.
Now salt is to bring out the flavors of the spices and the carrots, is to helps the carrot
and the onions to cook and it’s to bring the flavor into the lentils.
So because I’ve got a pretty big bowl here I’m adding quite a bit of salt and then
you just want to stir all those spices through your mix.
To cook them what you do is form them into patties.
I’m gonna fry them so I’m just heating up my pan here, add a little bit of oil and
then I’ll fry them about ten minutes on one side and then a few minutes on the other
probably about five.
You can also bake these patties, what you need to do in that case to protect them from
drying out is add a little bit of oil to the batter and then same thing just pop them in
the oven probably about 350F will be good temperature and they will probably take about
half an hour.
It does takes longer to bake them.
If you struggle with cooking your veggie burgers I have a few tips.
Number one is make sure your texture is right when you’re using your batter so like I
said it should stick together in your hand when it’s a batter.
Number two is giving these guys enough time in the pan to make sure they cook and these
guys have been in for about ten minutes and if we take a look they come really easily
off the pan because I miss a tip when you put them in the pan make sure there’s a
little bit of oil and you want to get the oil right underneath them when you stir them
off.
Giving them enough time on the other side is just as important but they don’t need
quite as much.
So once they are fully cooked, you can serve them up.
And kind of a rare occasion that Phil and I have bread in the house and we do right
now so I’m gonna put these on some bread, top them with some sprouts and then a little
piece of bread and there you go!
Healthy vegan lentil burgers!
Enjoy!