Broad bean burgers

Broad bean burger with ricotta cheese, avocado, spring onion and parsley. 

I love growing my own veggies. The best part is picking them to use in my kitchen. You would not believe how much better they taste and how better the texture is if you grow them yourself.

Just imagine harvesting a cucumber for example, and two minutes later serving it in a salad. Crunch, flavour and freshness, like you've never experienced before! Shits all over the plastic covered ones from the supermarket.

I recently harvested all of my broad beans. I have five freezer bags full in the freezer. I podded them all and then froze the individual beans. They defrost fine and is a great way to save them for use way after they have finished growing in the garden.

I made these delicious burgers, which I created and ate in several different ways, by changing the ingredients I used with the broad beans.

My hinting of a new food processor for Christmas has hopefully paid off, because I only had my mini processor to make these, which required me to pulse the broad beans in a few batches. There's a largish wrapped box under the tree, fingers crossed it's a new one.

I have taken to buying fresh beetroot and grating it into salads instead of buying it canned. It is lovely roasted too.

My favourite, poached eggs. A Broad bean burger instead of bread. Served up with avocado, spiralised zucchini and grated beetroot. I briefly blanched the zucchini swirls in the poaching water, removing before I cooked the eggs.

This is a basic recipe. I made it using a can of lentils the first time, and used a can of peas and corn the second. Both were good. Drain the canned veg well. With the lentils I used a handful of fresh chopped up coriander instead of ground. Use whatever you have in the pantry. If you don't have pepitas use sunflower seeds, sesame seeds or pine nuts etc. Experiment!


350 grams broad beans
1 can lentils, drained well
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 heaped tablespoon pepitas
80 grams plain flour
1 tablespoon olive oil

In a food processor, pulse broad beans until coarsely ground. Add lentils, spices, salt and pepitas and mix until combined. Stir through flour.

Shape into five patties, about 1cm thick. Place on a plate lined with greaseproof paper and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Heat oil in a large pan on medium heat. Add patties and fry about 7 minutes each side, until golden brown and cooked through. Serve in burgers or how ever you like. 

They are quite delicious.

Fair enough I could only fit four in my pan. I froze the uncooked patty wrapped in greaseproof paper, in a freezer bag and used it another time. 

I kept leftover cooked patties in fridge and reheated in the toaster in the morning for poached eggs. Worked a treat, a broad bean burger pop tart! As I am desperately trying to cut down on bread, particularly my beloved slices of sourdough bread at breakfast with eggs, these were awesome as a replacement.

An InLinkz Link-up

Growing broad beans this season? Here's two ways to use them.

I am well aware that broad beans are an acquired taste, and not everyone's cup of tea.

A bit like Brussels sprouts really. Both can be cooked up in the same way. If I had the choice, I'd choose broad beans, hands down.

Broad beans are easy, they are not fussy and easy as to grow.

At the start of Spring, choose a patch (a metre by a metre). Dig it over and sow some seed(about 12-16 seeds). You will soon be rewarded with loads of yummy beans.


1. Broad bean and bacon creamy pasta.

Boil up two cups of pasta shapes( I used curly macaroni here), in the last couple of minutes, add a cup of shelled broad beans. If they are large and older broad beans, you may have to peel the beans (once cooked), as the skins are usually tough and chewy.

While the pasta is cooking, fry off the bacon. Add the garlic and stir, add the cream and simmer for a few minutes until the cream starts to thicken. At this point add salt and pepper.

Add the pasta to the cream mixture, stir through and serve with a sprinkling of Parmesan cheese, if liked. One of my girls loves the stuff and won't eat pasta without it. 

2. Broad bean and bacon fry up.

This is one of my favourite broad bean side dishes, as it takes no time and is ready in a flash, and Oh. So. Tasty.

Slice a small onion, a few rashers of bacon and cook them on a medium heat until the onion is soft.
Add two cups of cooked broad beans and stir until combined and the beans have warmed through.

An InLinkz Link-up

November garden

 Pulled out the Broad bean plants. Izzy picking the last beans and feeding them to her sister. 

Never seen a kid so keen to eat raw broad beans!

 Antirrhinums or Snapdragons 

 Nigella 'Love in a mist'

 Pink carpet roses under shade, just starting to flower

Below, same carpet rose in full sun, monster, over two metres in height and almost three wide.

Would make an awesome rose hedge.

 A double white carpet rose

 Irises

 'Wedding Day' rambling rose in flower, pink fairy rose on trellis

 'Wedding day'

I took this one at 8pm last night. Still light. One kid asleep and the other on her way.

It helps having the extra daylight to do things like poison grass. This bed coming along. 

Got rocks from Mums old house on the hill and out at BILs farm :)

Flowering broad beans

Broad Bean dip

Broad beans are at their best at the moment, to use when they are young and fresh. Mum recently gave me some from her garden and I made this salad. A few days ago my sister in law gave me some more, yeah, I know, I must have 'give me your broad beans' written on my forehead! A reader mentioned broad bean dip when commenting, so I've decided to give that a go. I loved it. I loved it even better with home made lavash and mums preserved olives too.

Usually I have just boiled them with other veggies(boring!) or cooked them and mixed in fried onion, garlic and bacon, which isn't too bad. Brett loves broad beans, Izzy wont touch them, but altogether she's off her vegies at the moment anyway. She will eat them in salads like coleslaw, bean salads and she doesn't mind cucumber and tomatoes, and will eat corn cobs. Give her a raw carrot or frozen peas and she's happy as larry, but boil any veggie and she won't have a bar of it, even mash spud.

 

400 grams podded broad beans

1 small clove garlic, crushed

2 Tblsp lemon juice

1 tspn ground cumin

1/4 cup olive oil

salt and pepper

Cook beans until tender, about 10 minutes. Reserve 1/4 cup of cooking water when draining. Run beans under cold water until cool. If they are big or older beans you may have to peel them.

Blend(I used a stick blender) beans, cooking liquid, garlic, lemon juice and cumin until smooth. Gradually add the oil while blending and add salt and pepper to taste.

To serve, drizzle with a little olive oil, sprinkle with paprika and some chopped parsley. 

Broad Bean Salad

2 cups broad beans

2 tomatoes, finely chopped

1onion, sliced thinly

about 20 mint leaves

1 Tblsp olive oil

1/2 tspn sumac

Cook beans in boiling water for a couple of minutes. Drain and refresh under cold running water. Place in a bowl with tomato, onion and mint. Drizzle oil over and toss. Sprinkle with sumac.

Mums broad beans were small ones, so I didn't worry about peeling them as the skins weren't tough, and well, the Queen wasn't coming over for tea(I didn't deseed the tomato either!). Bigger, older broad beans have tougher skin, so you will have to pop them out of their shell. Just break the skin and squeeze the beans out.

My mint in the garden is growing in a half wine barrel. If you're thinking about planting mint, it is better to put in a container as it can go crazy and take over a garden patch.

I bought Sumac a while ago and hadn't used it, because I really didn't know what to use it for. It has a tart, tangy flavour and is used in the place of lemon juice. So if you haven't got any try a bit of lemon zest or juice, I suppose it works for the reverse. I'm going to use Sumac in more of my salads from now on and try it on fish. We haven't had fish for ages.

Salad was very nice, makes a change from serving
broad beans hot with other veg.