Tesco Value Chef: Broccoli and chickpea burgers

Wednesday, 1 February 2012

Broccoli and chickpea burgers

I still haven't quite made my mind up about the weekly veg box. I really enjoy getting it and cooking with different veggies that I might not otherwise get, but I'm not convinced it's good value for just two people - we do end up throwing a certain amount away. Less than the oft-quoted third that the average British household does though, and it would be even less if I didn't work shifts (I never cook when I'm on lates).

We had Purple Sprouting Broccoli this week and I decided it needed to star in the week's veggie night. I had some tins of chickpeas in the cupboard, too, having bought them on a three-for-one a little while back. Burgers beckoned.

Start by steaming the broccoli until the heads are tender - about 20 minutes for the 150g I had. Boiling is fine, if you don't have a steamer or a Heath Robinson approximation of one like mine.

Now for the flavourings. Do the necessary with an onion, an (optional) chilli pepper and a couple of cloves of garlic, and fry them very gently.

Once that's done, you need to whiz everything up together - the fried onion, pepper and garlic, the cooked broccoli, a drained 400g tin of chickpeas, an egg, 25g grated parmesan cheese and a sprinkling of basil, salt and pepper. If you've got a food processor, brilliant - otherwise a stick hand blender will do the job nicely.

You can do all the above preparation up to a day in advance if you need to, then when you're hungry all you need to do is make the mixture into burger shapes and cook them.

Fry them if you like, but this is the first time I've made these and I wasn't confident that they'd stick together so I put each on its own square of greaseproof paper and grilled them. They're probably healthier grilled too.