Rice & Beetroot burgers
One of the best vegetarian burgers I've ever made: easy, nutritious and extremely delicious. Made with rice, beetroot, carrot and lots of love.
Ingredients
- 1 cup cooked brown rice
- 1/2 cup sesame seeds
- 1 carrot
- 1 beetroot
- olive oil
- 1 onion
- 2 garlic cloves
- salt, black pepper
- 1 cup oats
- fresh herbs (cilantro, parsley, basil…)
Instructions
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Cook the rice with plenty of water. Make more so you have some rice leftovers to use another day, if you want.
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Grate the carrot and beetroot. Set aside.
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Lightly toast the sesame seeds in a pan at low heat (no need to add oil).
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Finely chop the onion and garlic. Set a pan to medium heat and drizzle some olive oil, sauté the onion for 2-3 mins, then add the garlic. Stir well and cook for another 2 mins. Add the carrot and beetroot, mix well and sauté for another 2 mins.
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Turn off the heat and add the rice, sesame seeds, salt and pepper to the pan. Mix well.
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Use a food processor to blend the oats into a flour consistency. Place in a large bowl.
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Now ad all the ingredients that were in the pan to the food processor and blend until you have a creamy but chunky consistency. Add it to the bowl where the oats are.
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Add the fresh herbs, chopped. Mix well and press the burger dough down to make it quite compact. Place the bowl in the fridge for at least 15 mins, this will make shaping the burgers easier.
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Shape the burgers with your hands (you can make them wet with a little water first, this helps). Set a pan to medium heat with some olive oil, sauté on both sides until its golden brown onboth sides.
Notes
Store:
- Cooked burgers: in the fridge for up to 3 days.
- Uncooked burgers: you can freeze in a tray or freezer bag for up to 3 months. Unfreeze and sauté or bake them in the oven.
This is one of those winner recipes.
This November I planned to visit friends at Casa Cuadrau, up in the Pyrenees, for a week. As we drove there with the windows down, it already felt so good to breath in the fresh mountain air. We had just left the Catalan Pyrenees when we got a call from the same friends we were about to visit: they were calling to say that Aragón (the region we were driving into) had issued a new restriction: no leaving or entering the region for 15 days. Oh well, I guess we are “stuck” here for one more week.
How many times can you say that and not care or worry about having to be anywhere else? I was truly grateful for this freedom of time, freedom to spend more moments in this amazing place with this beautiful people I was about to see.
The days there were filled with sun, green, tea, good food and smiles. The Valley of Vió is tiny, but it has managed to attracts some of the biggest hearts I’ve ever met.
You have Judit, Jorge and Moskis, who run Casa Marina, the coziest and most welcoming B&B, located in Buerba village. Then you have Casa Petricor, just at the entrance of Vió village, and the three beautiful hosts: Gemma, Maria José and Loyola – they are equally kind, adventurous and funny. Jesús and Dorita are the oldest and most tenured habitants of the village – orange, pink and yellow flowers grow outside their house, just across from their rich living vegetable garden. And if you keep walking down the Calle Única (only street) you will find yourself standing in front of Casa Cuadrau. This is where Katya, Dani and Uma live (and Sarita now too!) – this is also the place I called home last year. And if we’re honest, I still do. With time, I notice more and more how it becomes harder to call one place “home”. Every person I meet, bond with and come to love, somehow becomes a home.
Home is where the heart is. I always loved this saying, and I only started to really understand what it means the last few years, as I noticed how the people I connected with, in some wonderful and inexplicable way, have become walking living homes. They are a refuge, a safe place, a space where I can simply… be.
I truly enjoyed the time I spent there. We all love eating, food takes a new meaning, and it becomes not only a source of goodness for our bellies, but of happiness for our souls too.
These beautiful burgers were one of the recipes we enjoyed during our time there. As I was browsing Elka Mocker‘s Ama Come Vive Brilla book, I stumbled upon these beauties and realised that… we had all the ingredients! The next day, we made them. We loved them. And therefore I’m sharing the recipe with you.
If you try making them at home, I’d love to hear what you thought – if you made any changes, who you enjoyed them with or if your soul shined a little brighter after eating them!
Bon profit,
Silvia
