With summer upon us, we recently hosted a street barbeque where we invited all of our neighbours out to the green area to socialize and get to know each other. Since nobody goes to mass anymore, there are precious few opportunities to get to know your neighbours up and down your street anymore so, in the interests of building more community spirit, a bbq on the green sounded like just the job!

Everybody brought some food along so it was great that way. It was mostly beef and chicken burgers but I added these beetroot burgers to the mix to up the health profile of the bbq a bit. They are savage tasty.

You will need….

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp oil
• 400g uncooked beetroot, scrubbed and grated
• 4 spring onions, finely chopped
• 80g (vegan optional) parmesan cheese, grated.
• 100g feta cheese, crumbled. You could use tofu here if you want it vegan.
• 4 tbsp finely chopped mint
• 140g toasted cashews, roughly chopped. You could any type of nut here – walnuts, almonds, pecan….but cashews or walnuts work the best.
• 150g breadcrumbs
• Juice of ½ lemon

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
• Scrub and grate the beetroot.
• Finely chop the spring onions.
• Grate the parmesan, chop the cashews and crumble the feta.
• Heat up the oil in a pan at medium heat. Add the beetroot and spring onions and let it cook for 2 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and let it cool.
• Fill the beetroot mixture into a medium bowl along with both pieces of cheese, the mint, cashews, breadcrumbs and lemon juice. Mix well and add salt and pepper to taste. You could use a food processor here too if you are lazy, like me.
• Use your hands to form burger shaped patties. Add either a chia egg if the mixture is too dry or flour if too wet. To make a chia egg mix 1 tablespoon of chia seeds with 3 tablespoons of water and let it sit for 15 minutes.
• Bake the patties on a lined oven tray for 25 minutes and flip them halfway through.
• Alternatively, you could fry them in a pan with a little bit of oil.
• Add some hummus and pesto on top and serve with a side salad.

Changing your health for the better begins with a curious mind as to how you can improve from where you are – this might mean experimenting with new foods and being open to trying new things. Once you are open to new things, over time your taste buds and your cravings start to change. Be patient, change happens one meal at a time.

Yours in health and happiness,

JP