Our delivered veg-box the last few months has been absolutely over-flowing with beetroot. We’ve been swimming in the bloody purple stuff 😯 And judging by other comments I’ve received, we’re not the only ones. I guess our monsoon summer/autumn didn’t quite kill everything off. Anyhow… After pickling our first few tons of beetroot, we still had more and I was keen to find another use for the purple veg. We’d spied some beetroot burgers on a market-stall in Belper a few weeks ago and that had got me thinking. So if I can remember correctly (I’m a bit of a ‘chuck-it-in’ cook!!!), here’s the recipe for some rather nice spicy beetroot burgers.
Spicy beetroot burgers
- Beetroot – 2
- Carrot – 1
- Onion – 1
- Garlic – 2 cloves
- Chilli (red or green) – 1
- Bread – 2 slices
- Eggs – 1
- Borlotti beans – 1 tin
- Fresh coriander – Handfull
- Ground cumin – 1 tablespoon
- Ground coriander – 1 tablespoon
- Smoked paprika – 2 teaspoons
- Ground cinamon – ½ teaspoon
- Salt & pepper
To make these I pretty much blitzed it all up in a food-processor, but I guess you don’t really have to… First to go into my machine was the onion & garlic.  This was whizzed up until finely chopped. I then added the bread slices and whizzed again until the slices became breadcrumbs. Now for the messy part… If you’ve got a grater attachment for your machine then use it. I can’t begin to imagine how messy grating beetroot by hand would be 😯 Once peeled, the beetroot and carrot is grated into the onion & breadcrumbs. You can now tip your purple mixture into a big mixing bowl. We now need to add all of the spices, salt + pepper, a chopped chilli including seeds and the chopped coriander. Give everything a really good stir around. I added borlotti beans to my burgers, but most other beans/pulses will work equally well. Drain the beans and give them a quick whizz (not too much) in the food-processor before adding them to the burger mix (just to break them up a bit). And finally we need to add a beaten egg to the mixture to help bind the burgers together. And that is pretty much it… The burgers should mould together fairly easily. I made 4 fairly big burgers out of this mixture.
All you need to do now is cook them and clean the kitchen + yourself of beetroot juice 🙄