Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – Kale Burgers

Kale Burgers from page 227

Now that summer is here, I was looking for a healthy, delicious veggie burger. The ones in the store either had ingredients that I did not want in my food, such as oil or egg, or were dry and tasted like cardboard. There had to be a better alternative. I figured, I would have to make my own.

I tried a few recipes, and I will blog about them at a later date, but I wanted to tell you about my favorite burger so far. Kale burgers. Yes, you heard correctly…kale burgers.

You can find this fabulous recipe here.

I am always looking for ways to add veggies to recipes, and this one has tons of veggies….onion, sweet potato, kale. Put that together with the beans and the oats and you have one healthy burger! The recipe calls for optional mushrooms, which I did not put in. I only had a few shitake mushroom in the fridge and they were earmarked for Savory Smokey Oats.

The burgers came together quickly after I cooked the sweet potato. While the potato was cooking, I prepped and cooked the other veggies. When making a recipe like this, I like to water chop the veggies very fine in my VitaMix.

I used canned pink beans since I didn’t have kidney beans on hand, but they taste very similar, so I don’t think it mattered much. Once everything was cooked, I just threw everything in a big bowl and Chris squished everything together with her hands, leaving some beans whole.

We used this nifty little burger press that we found. The recipe says it makes 6 to 8 burgers. I got 7 nice size burgers.  This press works out really well as we can form the burgers as well as store them in the fridge. I definitely suggest chilling the burgers before cooking. I think this helps them to hold together and keep their shape.

Chris cooked these up in our non-stick frying pan. They took about 5 minutes on each side so the burgers were hot on the inside and browned on the outside.

We didn’t have any hamburger buns on hand, so we used rye bread. I am having trouble finding hamburger buns that fit in with our McDougall way of eating. Please…if you know of a brand that has no oil or animal products, comment below and let me know. My friend told me about some English Muffins that I think were by Food For Life that were healthy, but I haven’t found them yet. If I had those, that’s what I would have used, but the rye bread worked out just fine.

We topped the burgers with our fixings of choice, which were lettuce, pickles and ketchup. I was very surprised that the burger held up and didn’t just squish inside the bread. It was definitely softer than a store bought veggie burger, but it still held together nicely and had a nice mouth feel. I bet the texture would be even better with mushrooms, as they give a meatier feel to burgers and loaves.

Let’s see…prep time. 10 minutes to nuke the sweet potato,10 minutes to chop and cook the onion, garlic and kale (but that was at the same time the sweet potato was cooking), 5 minutes to add the other ingredients,10 minutes to combine and form patties, and 10 minutes cooking time.

Total time from start to finish – about 35 minutes.

NOTES:

• Shred the kale very fine for the best results.
• Frozen kale would work fine.
• The burger had a nice background spiciness to it from the Sriracha. Could use tomato sauce or salsa instead.
• Use an ice cream scoop so you get the same size burger each time.
• Will definitely try adding mushrooms next time.
• Not sure how they would turn out on the grill. Will have to try.

Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – Picadilly Bowl

Picadilly Bowl from page 243

I had some ingredients in the fridge that I needed to use up, like a half bag of broccoli flowerets, some kale and a bell pepper. The recipe with the funny name, Picadilly Bowl, fit the bill perfectly.

I found the recipe online here.

It took me about 20 minutes to chop and slice all the veggies. I didn’t do this prior to starting the recipe, so I felt a bit rushed in my prep work. It would have been much better to do the prep work first, and then start cooking…but I was hungry.  LOL!

I toasted the oats as the recipe says, but I’m not sure what that actually accomplishes and if that changed the taste at all. I probably would skip that step next time. I chopped the onion…and cried. Boy, was that a strong onion! While the onion was sautéing in a bit of veggie broth, I cleaned and sliced the mushrooms. The recipe doesn’t state which type of mushrooms, so I chose Cremini mushrooms. I usually save time by purchasing my ‘shrooms already sliced, but I wanted to use Cremini and they didn’t have them already sliced.

The recipe says to sauté the ‘shrooms and garlic for 1-2 minutes, but I like mine a bit more cooked, so I let them go for about 10 minutes. Once they got going, I did not need to add more veggie broth.

Once I added the rest of the ingredients and brought it up to the boil, the recipe stated to cover and simmer for 25 minutes. I had to add another 5 minutes to the cooking time since there was still too much liquid that was not absorbed. Once that was done, I added the corn, covered, and let sit for a few minutes to heat the corn through.

Wow! I was really surprised with how delicious this dish was. The sweetness from the corn, the earthiness from the mushrooms, the creaminess from the oats, the cheesiness from the nooch….oh my…like heaven in a bowl.

This held up really well for leftovers. The first time we didn’t add any hot sauce, but the second time we did add our favorite Sriracha. I liked it both ways.  Chris preferred it with the hot sauce.

Prep work 20 minutes, sautéing 15 minutes, cooking 35. Total from start to finish 70 minutes. I’m sure I could cut this time down if I do all prep ahead of time. The recipe states 4 servings, but we got 5. I probably added more broccoli and corn, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

I will definitely make this again.

NOTES:

• Have everything chopped up before you begin. Makes pulling this dish together that much easier.
• We don’t like mushy broccoli, so I didn’t chop the flowers. This allowed them to stay firm even through reheating the leftovers.
• Leftovers hold up really well. Good dish for batch cooking.
• Satisfying meal that stayed with us for hours.
• You won’t even know you are eating oats. They disappear and make the dish creamy and delicious.

Cooking Through “The Prevent & Reverse Heart Disease Cookbook” – The Ultimate: Lemon and Kale Open-Faced Sandwich

The Ultimate: Lemon and Kale Open-Faced Sandwich from page 62

Boy that was a mouthful! This is another open-face sandwich (there are a few of them in the cookbook).

This particular one calls for Mestemacher or Feldkamp bread. I did find this at Fairway near the rice cakes. It actually looks like a brick and is quite hefty for bread. I really, really liked it. If you are used to eating Ezekiel bread, you will like this one. Try to find it if you can. If you are used to regular old white or wheat bread, this may be a little too much for you.

This is pretty much the recipe here – Kale, Lemon and Cilantro Sandwich

The hummus that I already had prepared was the green onion hummus here.

The sandwich, being open-faced, was a little on the messy side to eat. This mean…not for company, kids.  Eat this one alone or with your loved one.  Definitely not with someone that you are looking to impress.

First bite, I really wasn’t sure about it yet. The bread was tasty, the hummus was creamy and perfect, and we all know how much I love kale…oh, but that lemon slice! Wowzers! That was a little too much for my taste buds to handle. I had to take the lemon slice off to finish the rest of the sandwich. Lesson learned! No more lemon slices for me!

If you do try the lemon slices, try a piece on a small section of the sandwich instead of making a mess like I did to decompose the sandwich and remove the lemon.

NOTES:

• The lemon slices were way too strong. Better off using just the lemon juice and maybe a little zest. The pith was too, too bitter.
• The recipe has tomato in the ingredients as optional…I did not use.
• Would be great with two slices of rye bread and grilled on the Panini press.
• The recipe called for cilantro or parsley.  Guess which one I used (hint: I hate cilantro).