A Meatless Approach

I like meat. A lot. No innuendo intended. I could never be a vegetarian because whenever I go a whole day without eating any sort of meat, I feel sort of hollow inside. Unless you've felt this same thing, you'll never understand what I mean. Beans and pulses, potatoes, rice, pasta and even veggie pizza can fill your tummy, make you full, but I still feel empty.

So why am I trying to cook more vegetarian dishes these days? For two reasons: save a bit of money until I get paid, but also to be a bit healthier. Just like it's not good for your liver to drink everyday, it's also not good for your digestive tract to eat meat everyday. Sometimes it just needs a break from all the animal.

The way I figure it, if I'm going to cook a vegetarian meal, if I'm not going to fill the hole then I should at least make the meal really tasty and really healthy. Then I'll feel good about myself even though I'm dying for a steak. So here's an example of a meal I recently cooked - a total meat free, low-carb extravaganza.

Sweet potato and kidney bean burgers,
with parchips on the side. Delish!!!

A while back, just after Vietnam, I ordered myself a burger press and went on a burger making spree. Amongst the tasty things I made was some vegetarian burgers, made from a combination of minced chickpeas, kidney beans, sweet potato, carrot, grilled red peppers, garlic and chilli. Once shaped, they were rolled in a mixture of bread crumbs and oats. Although they were quite soft as burgers go, they tasted pretty damn good, and I had made so many that a fair few had to be frozen for later times.

So the other day I finally finished these burgers off. We had four left in the freezer, I had just come back from a meeting intensive day at work and wanted something easy to cook. I prepped some parchips by par-boiling peeled baby parsnips, tossing them in flour and herbs and sticking them in a roasting tin full of hot oil to roast. I stuck the burgers in the oven at the same time, and then chillaxed for a while as they cooked up. Before serving, I cooked some onions in low-cal fake butter with worcestershire sauce, toasted some brown sandwich thins, and then constructed the burgers with the addition of some cheddar cheese and onion relish, with a drizzle of peri peri sauce on the top.

And I'll tell you what chaps, I may have been hungry when I went to bed, but at least the food tasted damn good!!!