Saturday, October 22, 2011

These Burgers are Alive!

Tonight I made the strangest meal that I have ever made- Sprouted Lentil Burgers.

MMMMMMmmmmm.  Sounds delish.... (at least I kept trying to convince my family!)


First of all, the lentils had sprouted A LOT.  I had no idea what to expect, but I'm not sure if I sprouted the lentils right.  I think so.  The first night I covered the lentils with water.  A few hours later before bed I checked on them and added another inch of water, because the lentils had already expanded more than I expected & I thought that overnight they might not all be covered.

Then it said to drain the lentils "up-side-down", which I'm assuming meant to put in the colander & sit throughout the day as they drained?  And I rinsed the lentils both morning & night for about 3 days.  The musty smell of the sprouts kind of made me nervous as I was preparing the burgers, because it was pretty funky.  I couldn't imagine how these would taste good at all.

The first step was to put a couple cups of the lentils into the blender along with 1/2 cup coconut oil, two inches of peeled ginger, 2 tsp of salt, and I was supposed to put in some horseradish, but all I had was Woeber's Horseradish Sauce, which COMPLETELY goes against everything pure I'm trying to eat right now.  Here are the ingredients:  Soybean Oil (!), Water, Corn Syrup (!), Vinegar, Egg Yolks, Modified Corn Starch (!), Horseradish, Salt, Artificial Flavoring (!), Potassium Sorbate (!), Xanthan Gum (!), Calcium Disodium EDTA (!).  I did put about a tsp, because I thought I better balance out all that ginger.  I'm still waiting to see if I have some sort of reaction to something in it.

I pureed the ingredients, then I was supposed to throw 6 cups of the sprouted beans in the food processor with the puree & coarsely chop them up so there was some texture for the burgers.  I don't have a food processor, so I hand chopped them.

That worked just fine.

Next step was to mix the puree and the chopped lentils together.  It was very moist, and I wasn't sure if it would even hold together while I was cooking it.



I used my hands, because I really needed to shape & mush together.  It said to use a skillet, but I just used my electric griddle at about 300 degrees.



Even at this point I wasn't so sure about these burgers.  I wasn't sure if I'd even be able to flip them with them falling apart.  Surprisingly, they were fine.



I loved that they even browned, which looked more appealing. 

So, the verdict?  They tasted about 50 times better than I thought they would.  It turns out our family dinner time was a split up, with Jimmy eating on the go.  He ate one and was really good about it.  He said "Tastes.... healthy".  Then he said it had an Asian flare to it, and on his way out he commented on the strong aftertaste.

He took Jess & Bek, and KJ and Grace are gone.  So it was Shiloh and me.  Her reaction?




I give this recipe 3 out of 5 stars, and thought it wasn't too bad.  It's definitely something that would have to grow on my family, and is a great recipe for Halloween.  My kids think it is creepy.

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