What I really like about the lentil taco filling is that it is super cheap to prepare, several different meals from the base dish can be made with ease, and besides spices it calls for just two ingredients making it near impossible to mess up. A single recipe makes the two of us 4 dinners and two lunch meals. That is quite a few meals for under a buck. While today I am making burgers and a meat loaf, I have made salisbury steaks and meatballs too. For any recipe I make I treat the lentil mixture as I would ground beef and just replace about two cups of lentil for a pound of meat. I then follow the recipe for whatever it is that I am making. I always make sure to use a binder when making recipes. Most anything works, I have found but I tend to use oatmeal,or bread crumbs. When I make veggie burgers, I add binder, shredded veggies and any other herbs that I wish. Once the patties are made I dredge them in flour for cooking and cook with a bit of butter or oil as there is no fat as there would be with ground beef. The burgers freeze well both before or after cooking so they make a good meal for when time is short.
The meatloaf is topped with a couple fatty bacon strips to add a bit of oil and it is topped with a honey bbq sauce. The burgers have onion, summer squash, carrot and garlic in them. The manthing has decided he wants burgers tonight, so will serve them with a fresh garden salad and half baked tater wedges. Dessert will be brownies that I made last evening.
2 cups of lentil mix for how much meat? 1 lb? Thanks!
ReplyDeleteyup oops,, better go add that lol
ReplyDeletehey dilli, I have been making this since you shared the recipe some time ago. I shared some with college kids & they now have a crockpot & a copy of your recipe. I will pass these variations on to them. They struggle with affording the cost of living while one is studying full time & her partner has a long commute to work & constant vehicle problems. They eat well though, being vegetarian & willing to cook from ingredients. Thanks for the great cooking ideas!
ReplyDeleteawesome michelle... I am hoping to concentrate a bit more on veggie cooking..with prices really fixing to rise again more and more people are going to be faced with those same issues... funny thing is , we eat mostly veggie here and i dont think about sharing what i cook up until after its been made , no recipe written and its all been eaten... cabbage is another very affordable and flexible ingredient for cooking with and we eat it at least 2 times a week in some form yet i rarely post on it..
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