Vegbox Meal – Homemade Beef Burgers

NB: I bought an organic vegbox from Doorstep Organics this week. This is the second post explaining how I used the produce in different meals.

Meal 2: Home-made beef burgers with fresh salad and potato rosti

• Burger Ingredients: Bread rolls, 600gms of beef mince (makes eight burgers), onion, garlic, egg, avocado, tomato, cheese, pickled veggies, tomato sauce, various herbs and spices.
• Salad Ingredients: Half a cos lettuce, half a cucumber, two Roma tomatoes, half a can of sweet corn kernels, balsamic vinegar and sesame oil.
• Potato Rosti Ingredients: Three potatoes, egg, flour, herbs and spices

Heat your oven to a low 100 degrees celsius to warm up your burger buns. It shouldn’t take more than six or seven minutes to be nice and toasty. Mix up your burger mix – I used an onion and a few cloves of garlic chopped roughly, mixed with the beef mince. I added pepper, salt, chilli powder, and some dried herbs to taste. Shape them into patties with your hands, and fry them in a well oiled pan on medium heat. They should take about four minutes on each side, depending how thick you make the patties,

Take the warm burger buns from the oven, slice them in half, and slather avocado on each half generously. Layer on a beef patty, a slice of cheese, a slice of tomato, and some pickled veggies (inspired by a Jamie Oliver recipe!). Add some tomato sauce to taste if you like – though you really won’t need it!

For the salad, roughly chop up the lettuce, cucumber and tomato, and mix in the sweet corn. Drizzle balsamic vinegar and sesame oil lightly, and let rest.

For the potato rosti, peel and grate the potatoes using the largest setting on your grater. Add herbs and spices to your liking, then crack an egg and add a tablespoon of flour to the mix to help it bond. Mix well, and then shape the mixture into small patties using your hands. Fry them on medium heat in a well-oiled frypan for around two or three minutes on either side. Remove from the heat onto a paper towel to help soak up the excess oil before serving.

Serve all three components of the meal together on the one plate – artistically! In total, the above should make you four full meals (including burger, salad and rosti), with four more beef patties left over for other meals.

Produce Quality: Produce used in this meal included half a cos lettuce, half a cucumber, half an avocado, onion and potatoes. As I mentioned in an earlier entry, the avocado was a bit overripe. Similarly, the onion was very old, and slightly tart as a result. The potatoes needed some deep eyes cut out of them, but were otherwise decent. I’m not a fan of cos lettuce as I find it quite bitter, but the cos lettuce provided in the vegbox was quite good quality. Overall rating for this produce: 6 out of 10.