I did it. For science.
Didn't really have a recipe for this. All I did was mimic the process my mom would have done when I was a kid. Just with without the ground turkey.
Started out by soaking some dry garbanzo beans over night.
Then spent ages running them through the blender because we don't own a food processor. Roughly chopped some mushrooms and chucked them on top of the pile.
Then on went half of a large onion. Salt. Pepper. At some point, I crunched up the leftover tortilla chips I had and threw them in, like in rd95's recipe.
Knew I was hording those stale chips for a reason, they turned out to be a nice addition. I was surprised how much I could taste them in the finished product.
Preheat! At the international temperature of "I'm not sure what to cook this at".
I added some eggs for binder. And some oil because it seemed like a good idea. Then some ketchup and the rest of that bottle of Worcestershire sauce that has been hiding in the fridge for way too long.
Mounded that shit up and added on a layer of generic Cream of Mushroom. This does no favors to the appearance of the finished product.
I lost track of time and have no idea how long I baked it. Probably a smidgen over an hour? Look at that unnatural sheen on the cream of mushroom! Like melted plastic.
The consistency reflects my lack of a food processor. Cooked chickpeas for Hummus are easily broken down with our stand mixer's beater paddle. But dealing with raw beans is an exercise in frustration when all you have is a blender.
It tasted really good. Almost scratched that itch.
A few things I would change:
- Use more onions, ketchup, and Worcestershire or similar sauce. I think it is hard to skimp here, the more put into my mixture, the more it took on a state of meatloafness.
- Add celery bits.
- I would caramelize half of the onions. I do this when I make minced mushroom tex-mex taco filling, and it really adds a lot of credibility.
- Try swapping in a loose-ish flour batter for the eggs. This crumbled too easily.
- Buy a fucking food processor.
- Add some gravy into the mixture. This was still fairly dry. I thought the mushrooms and onions would give up more water than they did.
- Might swap out the cream of mushroom on top for a glaze of ketchup mixed with some vinegar.
- Now that I am out of Worcestershire, I'll probably try using soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, and mustard seeds. I always have that on hand.
Nice pictures! Thanks for documenting all of that. I like seeing the step by step. You might be interested in this blog post about how to craft a veggie burger. The method this person uses is to pick a base from Legumes: Chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, red lentils, etc. Veggies: Corn, zucchini, beets, sweet potato, mushrooms, etc. Nuts/seeds: Cashews, walnuts, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, almonds, etc. then create texture, pick a binder (generally beans but can also be a flax egg etc) then add herbs and spices. The author has a lot of options for all of these steps in the article. There are a lot of options, so your meatloaf can get as creative as you like it to be.Grains: Oats, rice, millet, quinoa, whole grain bread, bread crumbs, etc.
Thanks for the link. We've been planning on trying to make veggie burgers for a while. I think the recipe that got picked out was based on onions, carrots, black beans, and oats. I don't think I would have thought of using flax seed meal as a binder.
maybe try some HP in the mix? looks delish and i'd be into trying it. my family's trying to go less-meat.
I'm not sure, what does HP stand for here? I'm drawing a blank. I forgot to add: if you eat a lot of this, I should warn you... it is kind of... fibery. If you know what I mean. It didn't bother me but I did hear a few complaints the next day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Sauce think A1 steak sauce but better. sweet, sour, good on steak.
You must know from your time in the states that we don't have that. I'm only aware if it, because one of my friends from Windsor brought me a bottle once upon a time after learning, to her horror, that we lack it here. I don't miss it. Coffee Crisp on the other hand. I'd eat that every day if we had it.
y'all have A1 though, which is close. I suppose i should have recommended that. edit also Coffee Crisp is BAE no.1 chocolate bar all years