A Rare Miss

Since becoming a vegetarian 18 months ago, I have trouble thinking of something I made that my girlfriend and I that we haven't finished and usually liked or loved.  Becoming vegetarian helped to expand my culinary horizons.  Originally we used prepackaged meat substitutes to help replace certain meals.  Over the last 18 months, we are using less and less packaged meat substitutes, as I have learned to make things such as veggie burgers.  Seeing beets in this weeks CSA share, I decided I would make veggie burgers with beets.

Beets and I have a checkered past.  Growing up, my parents had a family friend that they would often visit.  These visits usually involved dinner, including the "perpetual salad".  This was a salad that they had with dinner that usually just had new stuff added to it.  One of the always found items were beets.  These beets overpowered the salad and usually turned the salad an appetizing shade of pink.  I had always thought beets tasted like dirt, so I tended to avoid them.

I figured this week would be a great chance to give beets another chance, as I have gotten older my tastes have changed.  I found several recipes for beet burgers, usually including rice as a binder.  The other night I roasted beets, onions and some green garlic in the oven for about an hour, until nice and tender.   After the beets cool, I remove the skins and dice the beets up.  Just a heads up, beets will stain your hands and anything else they touch a nice shade of purple, so I would recommend not wearing anything light-colored.  I then added the diced beets, onions and garlic, to a bowl of rice and mashed black beans.  I seasoned the mixture with garlic, salt, pepper, cumin, chili powder and oregano.  The mixture made 6 patties, which I then refrigerated overnight.

Coming home after work, I pulled out my flat grill pan and excitedly browned up the patties.  The patties took on a nice brown crust.  Even with the nice crust, the patties were not very good.  My girlfriend said "These taste like something I would eat in the woods if I needed to survive".  After my first bite I replied, "This tastes like what people think vegetarian food tastes like".   We ended up eating the salad we made with the greens from the CSA share and then ran to Hyvee, and took advantage of the 2-day sale, buying a few boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.  If beets are in a future share they will be left on the exchange table, and replaced with something else.