Meat-and-veggie burgers.

So, we're eating less meat, you may remember.  For the most part, everyone has been quite satisfied with meals that give each of us two or three ounces of meat or fish, as long as there's plenty of other stuff on the side.  There has, however, been one glaring exception to the satisfied-with-less department:

 Burgers on the grill.

We typically eat one and a half to two pounds of meat, including leftovers for lunch the next day, when I make burgers.  Last time, I made only one pound of meat, and produced seven small, thin burgers, which tasted great but when everyone had had one, they looked around and said:  "But I don't want any coleslaw or baked potatoes or sugar snap peas!  I want another burger!"

Perhaps I should have served them with a mountain of Tater Tots.

Afterward, Mark said I should try to find a way to stretch hamburgers so that one pound pretended to be 1.5 or two.  Preferably an easy, bean-based way.  I happen to have in my freezer about 60 pounds of ground beef, in one-pound packages (local mostly-grass-fed beef!  slaughtered in the Minnesota glass-walled slaughterhouse mentioned in The Omnivore's Dilemma!  no kidding!) So it's time for some experiments. Nice - an excuse to have burgers once a week for a while.

My first experimental burger extender was selected on the basis of "I have a box of this stuff in my pantry:"

 Fantastic Foods brand falafel mix.

I keep falafel mix in my pantry as an emergency vegetarian entree.  I am not bad at cooking Mediterranean food from scratch, but everyone in my family -- including me -- prefers falafel-from-a-box to my from-scratch attempts.

Anyway, last night I mixed up a box of falafel (you just add water), squished my pound of ground beef into it with my bare hands, added an egg (it just looked like it needed one), and pattied it up into ten big fat burgers.  They sat in my fridge for a couple of hours before I got them out to warm to room temperature an hour before Mark threw them on the gas grill.  

We served 'em on buns -- okay, actually "Thomas's Bagel Squares" -- with onion and tomato and mayo and lettuce and ketchup and mustard and pickles.

Result:  It depends.  Do you like falafel?

Because that's what it tasted like.  The falafel texture and flavor dominated.  It hardly tasted beefy at all.  Mark called it "meat-enhanced falafel."  Maybe.  I think you could fool a career vegetarian into eating beef with these things (not that you should).  As I bit into my hearty burgery sandwich I thought to myself, Forget the ketchup -- these things need cucumbers and tzatziki sauce.

BUT.  Bear in mind that falafel does not normally stand up to being grilled.  It's strictly a skillet-or-broiler food.  These beefalafel patties behaved beautifully on the grill:  stayed together, got attractive little grill marks across them, etc.  So we have indeed learned something new:  If you want to grill your falafel, put some meat in it.

It's possible that I simply have the wrong ratio here.  Maybe what's needed is half a box of falafel to a pound of ground beef.  (We certainly had enough food to go around -- there are five patties left over.)  But there are many other mix-ins left to try.   I'm going to try a number of commercial veggie burger type things before I move to from-scratch options that are more complicated than "cook lentils, mix in."

Yeah, I know, I could just make meatloaf burgers.  But I already know what those taste like.  I'm trying to move into new territory (and beanier territory -- we usually already serve our burgers with bread, I don't see how adding bread crumbs is the best nutritional extra.)

Comments

[Amy F]

We've been making burgers with this America's Test Kitchen recipe: http://americastestkitchen.com/recipe.asp?recipeids=3506&iSeason=8
except we use a pound of meat (and downsize the other ingredients proportionally). We found that it makes 4 very good sized burgers and as long as we have a side or two, we don't mind the lack of seconds. There must be just enough extra in there to plump them up well.

[CJ]

How do you feel about TVP?

[mandamum]

I think the More With Less cookbook talks about lentils extending hamburger...but that might be in spaghetti sauce.