Wednesday, March 06, 2013

Lemon & sage white bean burgers

February 26, 2013


This blog has been pretty heavy on the restaurant posts lately, reflecting our lack of home cooking enthusiasm over the last few months (in part thanks to trips away to Sydney and Hobart). With a couple quiet weeks in a row we've been trying to get back into the swing of things, and this simple burger recipe from the tropical vegan was a pretty good to recapture my cooking mojo.

There's not a lot to it - especially if you take the lazy option of using canned beans like we did - but the results are excellent. The patties hold their shape well and are hearty and filling with nice subtle flavours from the lemon and sage. We didn't have the energy for the roasted eggplant sauce that Theresa whipped up, so Cindy recreated the dipping sauce from the previous night's rice paper rolls, which was a fine substitute. We ended up getting three meals out of these patties and I really enjoyed them every time - something to add to our regular burger rotation.


Lemon & sage white bean burgers

2 cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
1/4 cup olive oil
juice of 2 small lemons
1 teaspoon dried, ground sage
1/2 cup polenta
1/2 cup gluten flour
salt and pepper

Combine the beans, olive oil, lemon juice and sage in a big bowl and leave them to soak together for as long as you can be bothered (I only read the recipe once I was hungry, so they only marinated for 10 minutes or so).

Mash the beans up as best you can -  you want to have a fairly smooth mush without too many distinct beany bits remaining.

Stir in the polenta and generous sprinkles of salt and pepper. Add in the gluten flour and knead the dough for a few minutes - it should be a pretty solid dough by the time you're done.

Form the mixture into patties (we ended up with 6 good-sized burger patties from the quantities above) and then fry over medium heat for 5 minutes or so on each side. 

Serve in rolls, with salad and the condiment of your choosing.

14 comments:

  1. Oh yay! I'm glad you liked them! We did them again, but this time with lime and basil. They are possibly Andy's new favourite burgers, and this after having cannellini beans in the pantry unused for *months*.

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    1. Mmmmm, lime and basil sounds pretty great too! Thanks for sharing a terrific (and versatile!) recipe, Theresa. :-)

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  2. Yep, this is definitely my kind of burger. I love any kind of white bean - they are so versatile. Soups, stews, dips, burgers! Actually, your recipe could be adapted quite well to make a Greek-style vegetarian burger! Do you mind if I had a go at this and blogged about it? With credit to you of course :)

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    1. Oh, Lisa, please do! I'd love to see how you tweak it. :-)

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  3. Replies
    1. Yes! Credit to Theresa for sharing this one with us.

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  4. This sounds fabulous! A great go-to vegan patty.

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    1. Hi leaf - yep, and it's ripe for the tweaking from imaginative folks like Theresa and Lisa above. :-)

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  5. these sound great - it is just burger season right now - look forward to seeing you spend some time back in the kitchen - am sure there will be lots of inspiration from all your eating out

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    1. Johanna - sadly we've already hit more (separate, work-related) travel time! That still leaves things open for solo cooking. :-)

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  6. I just saw these on Oh My Veggies, they look delish, and I loooove the lemon and sage flavors!

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    1. Thanks Kari! I'd certainly encourage you to give them a go. :-)

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  7. Polenta and gluten flour: what intriguing ingredients for a bean burger. And I love the idea of using white beans, too. My husband and I cannot wait to wait to make these...and I'm talking tonight!

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    1. Welcome Lynda! I hope you like them as much as we did. :-)

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