The meatball effect – meatball burger with coleslaw and chickpeas

This burger really deserves a blog post: It is casual and fancy at the same time and with its oriental flavours it will make your guests happy and satisfied.

Why meatball effect? Once you´ve started you can´t stop eating! Promise!

Another plus? It is a dairy-free recipe. I think I mentioned that Hubert has a milk intolerance. No cream, no cheese, no butter, no yoghurt etc. Sounds complicated? Yes, sometimes it is a challenge, especially when we cook for guests. In the end butter and cream really enhances the flavours. But then you also realise how many dishes don´t contain any dairy products at all and how many possibilities there are. And then you can replace milk with alternative products, like soy milk or oil instead of butter.

Of course, when I want to prepare a special meal for friends or family and I know the taste would suffer if I leave out the dairy products, I prefer to prepare an alternative for Hubert. A little more work, yes, but in the end everyone is happy, including me! So whenever we have dairy-free recipes we tag them, so you can easily look it up in the search function.

Recipe for meatball burger with coleslaw and chickpeas*

Medium difficult
Ingredients for 6 pax

Meatballs:

• 10 g fresh ginger
• 1 onion
• 1 garlic clove
• 10 coriander stalks
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 400 gr of minced beef
• 1 tsp ground coriander seeds
• cayenne pepper
• salt, black pepper
• 1 egg
• 1 Tbsp breadcrumbs
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 2-3 Tbsp tomato purée

Coleslaw:

• 150 gr carrots
• 2 spring onions
• 200 gr sweetheart cabbage
• 3 Tbsp mayonnaise
• salt, pepper
• 2 EL lemon juice

Chick peas:

• 1 small tin chickpeas
• 5 flat parsley stalks
• 1 garlic clove
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• cayenne pepper
• salt, pepper

6 ciabatta bread rolls (unfortunately when I prepared the burger the ciabatta bread rolls were sold out, so I took a similar one).

1. Finely chop the ginger, garlic and onion. Roughly chop the fresh coriander. Roughly ground cumin in a mortar.
2. Mix minced beef with ground coriander, cayenne, 1/2 tsp of salt and pepper each, egg and bread crumbs in a big  bowl.
3. Put in fridge for about two hours
4. Peel the carrots and grate roughly. Clean spring onions, cut off the dark green part and slice the rest in fine onion rings
5. Clean sweetheart cabbage, remove stalk and slice finely
6. Mix the carrots, onions and cabbage with the mayonnaise and season with salt, pepper and lemon juice, leave aside for about 30 mins (you can also leave it longer, the tastes becomes even better)
7. Pour the chic peas and roughly chop the parsley and garlic
8. Heat up the olive oil in a pan and stew the chic peas, parsley and garlic at medium heat for about 1 min.
9. Add the cayenne pepper, salt, pepper and cumin and mix well. Put the pan aside and squash chic peas a little bit with a fork
10. Take the minced meat out of the fridge and form 18 equally shaped meatballs
11. Fry them with some oil at medium heat for 5-7 minutes. Add tomato purée and 50 ml of water, mix well and let braise for 1 minute
12. Cut the ciabiatta breads in half and plate it with the ingredients. Serve immediately.

 

*I found the recipe in “Essen & Trinken”, a german cooking magazine which I receive every month.