106: Curry Beet Burgers

Chomp! Ok, so. Still haven't worked out the patty cohesion situation (you can see it smushing there), but definitely improved in the flavor department.

While working on my prior beet burger experiement, the thought occurred to me to do an Indian one. Not sure what sparked it, other than my always craving good Indian food. So I did that thing, and attempted some of the changes I'd mentioned in my prior post to help keep it together. Those definitely didn't work. Anyway.

Ingredients (as always, approx. as always, I'm a little sorry):

Pinch of hing

~3/4 tsp curry powder

~1/8 tsp tumeric

~1/8 tsp cumin

~1/8 tsp coriander

Pinch cinnamon

Pinch smoked paprika

~ salt, pepper

1 beet, diced

1 smallish onion, diced fine

1 jalapeno (or some kind of spicy pepper), mostly deseeded and diced

2 garlic cloves, grated

~1/2 tbs ginger, grated

1/3 cup spelt

1/3 cup cannellini beans

Spoonful of flour

1/2 beaten egg

Paneer

Cilantro

Similarish methodology. I started my onions and pepper  in a pan until they got soft. Then I remembered the hing, so I took those onions out, heated a little more oil, then fried the hing and most of those spices above. Added the onions back in, then the ginger, garlic and beets. Let that go for a bit.

Mixed and mashed my spelt and beans, then in an attempt to dry those out, added them to the pan for a few minutes.

Put that mix in a bowl, let it cool, then added the egg portion and flour. Cooked them up in a pan and topped with paneer and cilantro. Had a few bites then remembered that rest of egg, so fried that up and added that to the burger, too. Nom!

These fell apart pretty quickly. I'm always hesitant adding flour, as I feel it'll make the burger bland, but these were spicy enough that they could've stood up to a bit more binding. I used high gluten flour, too, but it didn't help that much.

After a quick search on the internets, I'm not sure if I did anything wrong, per se. I just need to toy around with it a little more. Suggestions: leaving it in the fridge overnight, cooking it in the oven- though I'd really like to not heat up my apartment every time. Using potato is an option I was considering, but I was running a bit short on time and didn't want to fuss too much with an extra step.

I had luck last time getting a good sear on the patties. A hot pan does wonders. These were in a low pan for a while, and it was obvious when flipped that they were only lightly browned, and already splitting a bit. a uniform patty shape would help, too.

Onto the good, though. They were DELICIOUS. Sweet and spicy (spices-wise) up front, then a nice building heat from the peppers. And oh how bloody and raw they looked. Definitely want to do this again in front of people, but not tell them they're veggie burgers and freak em out a bit. Unfortunately I'm out of beets. For now.