Tag Archives: beans

Bean burgers

Well, it’s been a year – literally, looking at the last post’s date. Urm, oops?! For reasons, really haven’t been doing much cooking, and very little ‘new’ and blog-worthy. Hoping that gets to change now, and indeed I have started with a few bits here and there. Now just to remember to blog 😉

cooked beanburger on a cheese-topped bun, with potato wedges and salad on plate in background

These bean burgers – so adaptable – have been in rotation for a long while now, based on the HelloFresh recipe I tried ages ago. So that experiment was worth it! I found their take very basic, and have been on a mission to improve it since. Finally feeling I’ve ‘cracked it’, was beyond time for a blog post – not to mention a page for the recipe so *I* don’t forget what went so well for next time!

What I most love about this recipe is how versatile it is. From the korma burgers originally – which I’ve used with other curry pastes, added veg, and even some lime pickle and/or mango chutney – I’ve gone on to make pesto burgers (nice, but maybe a little more limiting on suitable toppings), BBQ/jerk burgers, and several variations on a more mexican-y based option.

I also feel they’re nice and healthy, much more so than store-bought ones that so often disappoint. You can vary the sizing, too – having made some just too big, I now try to restrain myself and match the burger buns! But nothing stopping you doing smaller ones for kids, etc.

Eight shaped bean burger patties, ready to cook

They also totally match my love of batch cooking. I got nine burgers out of a recent batch – making them pretty cost effective, too. I reckon these worked out at something like 30p per burger?

So what made this batch so much better? For a start, I got my breadcrumb ratio right! I always make a double batch from the original recipe, with 2 tins of beans (kidney and black, or pinto, for variety), but have sometimes forgotten to double the breadcrumbs – oops! Makes for very crumbly burgers when you haven’t used enough binding. I also took a while to decide if panko breadcrumbs were used in the same ratio as regular ones – yup, 100g = 100g.

Talking of breadcrumbs, hoping you don’t buy yours! I have a bag in the freezer, and every time there’s a tail end of a loaf needing used, I quite often just crumble it and add to the bag.

The other new ‘win’ was bringing in just a little of the fabulous Cookie and Kate veggie burger recipe, in the form of adding a mashed, pre-roasted sweet potato. Really helps with the binding, and it’s delicious!

The photos above make everything look a little red, but this is from the addition of paprika, as well as a little chilli and hot sauce (a smokey one, for a rich flavour), and tomato puree. I’d also added diced onion and peppers, because I think veggie burgers should have y’know veggies in them!

The possibilities with this recipe seem endless, so I hope if you do add your own spin you come back and tell me about it! 🙂 Happy cooking!

Hello Fresh: Veggie Tostadas

The latest (last?) experiment from Hello Fresh’s meal delivery was another Mexican dish. I am always amazed at how many times you can put a flour wrap together with quite similar ingredients and come up with a different dish!

Tostadas, as the name might suggest, involve toasting – or at least, oven baking – the tortilla. On top of that is added a veg, bean, and tomato mix, plus roasted peppers and sour cream.

Hello Fresh veggie tostatos

I really liked this, and was slightly amazed that it did manage to taste different from other, very similar things I’ve cooked before. I’d never thought to put carrot into mexican cooking, either, but it worked well.

If I was doing it again, I probably wouldn’t bother roasting the peppers – they can go into the saucepan just as well, I reckon. 

Simple, but tasty. Overall rating: 8/10.

Hello Fresh: Fajita Chicken

Penultimate recipe from my first Hello Fresh box was Fajita chicken. Not chicken fajitas – chicken, with fajita spices. And refried beans 🙂

hello fresh ingredients

I make fajitas a lot, so didn’t quite know what I’d ‘learn’ from this recipe, but actually it had enough little differences to have felt very worthwhile. Oh yeah – and it was bloomin’ tasty!

First off, butterflying a chicken breast. I knew how, I just don’t. I would suggest that you might want to use a pair of scissors – and definitely recommend owning kitchen scissors, period! – if you’re not feeling too confident with a knife. Benefit of butterflying? Well, it cooks quicker! I still wasn’t going to take the recommended 8-10 mins in pan, 10 mins in oven, though, and it got more like 6 and 20+ – I need to make sure my chicken is cooked!!

So for me it was wedges in the oven, then after 10 minutes added the chicken and sliced peppers. I wasn’t going to have the wedges – three nights in a row for those! – but since the oven was on anyway…

The refried beans weren’t something I’d tried to make before, at all, and was very pleased. My one thing on the recipe, though, would be this ‘half a sachet’ nonsense. Very, very hard to judge – I think I should have had more on the chicken and less in the very spicy beans. All good, but just a bit of awkwardness on what’s supposed to be an easy method.

Hello Fresh fajita chicken

I cooked both portions – the pack of chicken surprised me by having two, smallish but decent sized chicken breasts in it, and again I was pleased with the quality (esp. compared to the thigh). One butterflied bit of chicken plus half the peppers and half the bean mix went into the fridge, and the following day I shredded the chicken, made some ‘mexican-y’ rice, and reheated the beans for a second attempt at it all. Was still rather lovely 🙂

Enjoyed this immensely. Three very nice, more impressive meals than expected in a row!

Overall rating: 8/10 – very good, again, felt the need to not follow the recipe to the letter (cooking timings) and not sure someone without much experience would feel confident doing that. A few more helpful hints, maybe on the website, would make this a better service, methinks. But a lovely plate(s) of food, and a few different techniques make this one feel very worth it 🙂

Hello Fresh: Korma Bean Burgers

Okay, one ‘meh’, one success – this could go either way, right? Experiment the third: korma bean burgers.

hello fresh ingredients

I didn’t get ’round to blogging about it, but I actually made bean burgers a month or two ago. They were nice enough. These, however… new favourite! 🙂 And simpler than the ingredients might make it look: the potato, lettuce, carrot, mayo and cider are all for side dishes. Not pictured: egg(s).

Making them was a little more convoluted than the previous recipes, and it was marked ‘medium’ (I think). To be honest, this is the point where I think the instructions were a bit less than ideal. We get a whole step on how to make a salad (strips of carrot, really?), whereas there’s one line on ‘cut the potatoes into wedges’ – that’s not actually as obvious for some as you might think, if you’ve never done it before. Also, in my experience, they take a lot longer to cook than the recipe says, but it’s so very very dependent on how thick you’ve made them. Not even mentioned, argh!

The burgers themselves are a mix of whole and mashed beans, breadcrumbs, curry paste, and egg to bind. I am sooo customising this going forward. Add finely chopped onion, peppers, any veg! Swap curry for… I dunno, tomato? Harissa? Options!!

I did stick to the recipe this time, though – well, apart from frying an egg to top the burger. I ate it later instead 😉 And I upped the salad game a bit, too. You can’t see the curry mayo in the pic below, but it was surprisingly good – I did wonder about more curry and how strong it would be, but the korma paste provided was very mild. The burger buns were really nice, too.

korma bean burger on plate

As the minimum portion is for 2 people and I’m cooking for one, what to do with the ‘spare’ burger (or 2, you could easily have split the patty into 3)? Well, I cooked both more or less as per instructions (they held together really really well, I was very chuffed!) – 5-10 minutes in the pan and more like 20 in the oven – and I think you could have frozen the burger after either stage. I went with refrigeration overnight, and reheated it the following day for 10 minutes in the oven. Was still delicious!

Overall, then: 8.5/10. Higher for taste and joy of finding a recipe I will customise over and over, but the recipe card was a bit on the poor side. Well, I say that – you’ll see there’s no comparison shot in the photo, and that’d be down to the card not being included in my box. Thankfully they are online, but it was a little more awkward.

Sweet potato chilli

One of my new favourite recipes came courtesy of a friend, who’d adapted this Cookie+Kate offering. I’ve put my own spin on it through repeat cookings, but somehow I’ve never managed to write up the recipe – which you’ll find here.

sweet potato chilli in a bowl

As stated in the original, the thing that really makes this lush and rich, is blending about a third of the mixture before stirring it back in. I cannot recommend this enough! Easiest way is with a stick aka immersion blender – absolutely love mine!

With the added thickness, this is ready to eat straight from the pot, but it also freezes very well. Have also used butternut squash and carrot instead of the sweet potato, but try anything that takes your fancy. Different types of bean are also good – my preference is for mixed bean salad, which comes with sweetcorn, and kidney beans.

Best way to serve, in my opinion, is with some sour cream (or natural yogurt, possibly with some lime juice) and cheese, melted over the top. Scoop it up with tortilla chips for a bowl of nom!

 

Butternut squash and bean crumble

I’m not doing too well on the mix of recipes (or new recipes – yet!) as all these yummy vegetarian dishes have me looking up ones I haven’t tried in a while!

I’m not sure what’s taken me so long to make this Butternut Squash and Bean Crumble again, as it was absolutely delicious! I do love butternut squash, and the mix of the wine and tomatoes is a lovely base. The chilli surprised me a little, but it works – I used a level teaspoon, and wouldn’t want it any hotter. I might, however, have to try butter beans (lima beans, I think?) next time, as the cannellini were a bit small and inconsequential in the finished dish.

The crumble topping is one I intend to try on other things: the breadcrumbs went lovely and crispy, and my experiment of adding some mixed seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, sesame) added some lovely crunch and colour – I’ll be doing that again!

My one concern about this recipe is portion size. I remembered the first time I made this ended up with just HUGE portions (perhaps I misread the original recipe‘s 6 portions and thought it was 4?). This time, I halved the recipe – and please don’t worry, I have a great way to use up the other half of the squash! – thinking it would make four decent portions, instead of three huge: instead, I must confess that my version of the recipe gives more of a lunch portion than main course (although: perfect excuse for dessert!). I ended up eating 2/3rds of the half I cooked (the other half is in the freezer), and will throw some salad together with the remaining third for tomorrow’s lunch.

It was really hard to stop here and leave some for tomorrow's lunch...!

It was really hard to stop here and leave some for tomorrow’s lunch…!