Beets and Quinoa Burger

So I decided to make veggie burgers using some of my favorite ingredients (read beets and quinoa 🙂 ). The good part of them is that they are simple to make, totally delicious and so very healthy. These are vegetarian and even vegan so I think even if you do eat meat you must try these. Also since quinoa ,which is gluten-fee, is used here the burger patties are a great tasty option for those of you who follow a gluten free diet

Ingredients (makes 5-6 big patties):

200 grams beets

200 grams quinoa

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 scallion finely chopped

4-5 cloves of garlic crushed

A handful of chopped walnuts

Salt to taste

Soy soup sticks crushed for bread crumbs (you can use any other bread crumbs that you like)

1 onion sliced thinly

1 tomato sliced thinly

For the dressing:

1 spoon of whole grain mustard

1 teaspoon of honey

2 spoons of olive oil

1/4 lemon squeezed for its juice (I squeezed half a lemon and felt that it made the dressing more acidic so had to use some more olive oil to counter the acidity. Hence adjust according to your preference)

Let the beets boil in 1 liter of water with skin on. Simultaneously cook the quinoa in boiling water with some salt in the water. Use 1 part of quinoa to 2 parts of water to cook it. After boiling the beets for about 20 min, cool them under running water (you know the beets are cooked by using a fork to pass it through them and it should slide in easily). Then peelthe beets and cut them into cubes – they would look something like this

The beautiful beets:

The cooked quinoa:

Shred the beets along with the cumin seeds using a food processor or blender. Next take 1 teaspoon of olive oil and saute the chopped scallion and crushed garlic for about 2 minutes. This will remove the rawness from them. Then take a huge mixing bowl and mix the shredded beets, cooked quinoa, saute mixture of garlic and scallion, bread crumbs, salt and walnuts. Mix well . Form round burger patties with your hands and grill them using a girdle pan (do not put oil on it). Cook on one side for 5 min and then flip until they turn they start to brown on both sides:

Finally mix all the ingredients of the dressing. Use burger buns or toast wholewheat slices of bread (like I did), spread some dressing on them, place the beets/quinoa patties on it along with the thinly sliced onions and tomatoes (I actually ran out of lettuce and think it would have been good to have some lettuce as well. Nonetheless we enjoyed the burgers without lettuce 🙂 ). Bite into them and enjoy!!

Did you know?

Quinoa is very high in proteins – almost as high as meats. So for a vegetarian or vegan diet it is one of the best way to incorporate natural proteins in your food intake. More of it here : Health Benefits of Quinoa