Lentil burgers

The VegHog is absolutely crazy about different vegetarian burgers. It's so much fun to invent new veggie burgers. This time I have made very wholesome lentil burgers that are rich in protein. My recipe makes about 15 burgers but I would recommend freezing some of them in order to be able to warm them up quickly on other occasions.

Ingredients

1 cup of red lentils

1 cup of green lentils

1 large onion

2 garlic cloves

1 carrot

100g smoky cheddar grated

3 eggs

2-3 vegatable stock cubes

Spelt flour

Salt

Pepper

Oil

I made them like this:

Bring water to boil and put a vegetable stock cube or two into the water. Cook the rinsed red lentils in there and make the same arrangement for the rinsed green lentils. I like to cook them separately as the green lentils need slightly longer to get ready. Try not to let the lentils get too mushy. They should be soft but it's nice to have some whole lentils in the burgers as well.

In the meanwhile chop the onion and garlic and grate the carrot and the smoky cheddar cheese. Put them into a mixing bowl. When the lentils are cooked let them cool down. Then put them to the bowl with the cheese, onion, garlic and carrot. Season with salt and pepper, add the eggs and mix everything thoroughly together. Add a dash of spelt flour to bind the mix to an even burger dough. It should be firm enough not to fall apart in the frying pan.

Heat a generous amount of oil in a frying pan and shape burgers from the dough. Fry the burgers at a medium heat until they are crispy on both sides and fully cooked inside.

I served these lentil burgers with char-grilled halloumi, my carrot and spelt rolls, oven wedges and fresh pea shoots. You can find the recipes for the carrot and spelt rolls and oven wedges in my blog posted previously this month.

If you want to make the same combination I would recommend baking the rolls first and making the oven potatoes. Then you can char-grill the halloumi on a griddle pan simultaneously with the burger frying.

Put some pea shoots on the side and between the burgers and it gives some freshness to the dish. The spelt rolls and potato wedges give a lovely rustic feel to the burgers and this dish is very filling.

Veganise it! You can easily make a vegan version as well by leaving out the cheese and eggs. Then the texture is more fragile and you need to be more careful with the frying. For the vegan version I would also replace the spelt flour with potato flour as that binds the dough better together.

Of course you could also serve these burgers with a smooth potato mash and steamed or roasted vegetables. The possibilities are basically endless.

Stay hungry!

Your VegHog