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Last week, I tried mixing one pound of beef with one box of falafel mix and grilling it as burgers.  It worked okay.  Since it made too much food anyway, I decided to try half a box of mix to one pound of meat tonight.  Will let you know how it turns out.

(I get the beef in one-pound frozen chubs from the processor, so it doesn't really help us use less meat to make recipes that use only part of a chub.  I'll still have to finish it off within a few days, and I tend to use up extra bits of meat in things like scrambled eggs, which I would have had meatless if I didn't have some meat sitting around.)

Someone asked me how I feel about TVP.  So-so is the answer.  I don't want to increase our soy consumption greatly; I prefer to use soy cautiously.  Also, I'm not sure it qualifies as "food" a la Michael Pollan.  But it is on my list of items to try mixing with the burgers.  

The TVP product I am planning to try to mix with the beef is called "Gimme Lean" (undoubtedly a play on Jimmy Dean sausage).  (Side note:  The packages of this stuff that I always used to buy were emblazoned with a banner that read:  "Makes incredible sausage patties!"  I always thought that it ought to read, "Makes CREDIBLE sausage patties!"  But I digress.)  I really like the stuff, and I bet it would mix pretty well with beef.

Also on my list are blander creations of home-cooked lentils and bulgur, and a couple more stabs at meatloaf burgers.  I want to do something quite simple and easy, since I don't make hamburgers because I enjoy their complicated recipe.

UPDATE:  It occurred to me that the implied division sign in my title is incorrect.  Since I am decreasing the ratio of falafel to beef, this post should be entitled, "More beef/falafel burgers."

UPDATE AGAIN:  Yum!  Half a box of falafel makes a big difference.  These were noticeably burgerier, which is what I was going for.  (Not that the others were bad, they just made me ask why I bothered putting meat in them at all.)

So, we're eating less meat, you may remember.  For the most part, everyone has been quite satisfied with meals that give each of us two or three ounces of meat or fish, as long as there's plenty of other stuff on the side.  There has, however, been one glaring exception to the satisfied-with-less department:

 Burgers on the grill.

We typically eat one and a half to two pounds of meat, including leftovers for lunch the next day, when I make burgers.  Last time, I made only one pound of meat, and produced seven small, thin burgers, which tasted great but when everyone had had one, they looked around and said:  "But I don't want any coleslaw or baked potatoes or sugar snap peas!  I want another burger!"

Perhaps I should have served them with a mountain of Tater Tots.

Afterward, Mark said I should try to find a way to stretch hamburgers so that one pound pretended to be 1.5 or two.  Preferably an easy, bean-based way.  I happen to have in my freezer about 60 pounds of ground beef, in one-pound packages (local mostly-grass-fed beef!  slaughtered in the Minnesota glass-walled slaughterhouse mentioned in The Omnivore's Dilemma!  no kidding!) So it's time for some experiments. Nice – an excuse to have burgers once a week for a while.

My first experimental burger extender was selected on the basis of "I have a box of this stuff in my pantry:"

 Fantastic Foods brand falafel mix.

I keep falafel mix in my pantry as an emergency vegetarian entree.  I am not bad at cooking Mediterranean food from scratch, but everyone in my family — including me — prefers falafel-from-a-box to my from-scratch attempts.

Anyway, last night I mixed up a box of falafel (you just add water), squished my pound of ground beef into it with my bare hands, added an egg (it just looked like it needed one), and pattied it up into ten big fat burgers.  They sat in my fridge for a couple of hours before I got them out to warm to room temperature an hour before Mark threw them on the gas grill.  

We served 'em on buns — okay, actually "Thomas's Bagel Squares" — with onion and tomato and mayo and lettuce and ketchup and mustard and pickles.

Result:  It depends.  Do you like falafel?

Because that's what it tasted like.  The falafel texture and flavor dominated.  It hardly tasted beefy at all.  Mark called it "meat-enhanced falafel."  Maybe.  I think you could fool a career vegetarian into eating beef with these things (not that you should).  As I bit into my hearty burgery sandwich I thought to myself, Forget the ketchup — these things need cucumbers and tzatziki sauce.

BUT.  Bear in mind that falafel does not normally stand up to being grilled.  It's strictly a skillet-or-broiler food.  These beefalafel patties behaved beautifully on the grill:  stayed together, got attractive little grill marks across them, etc.  So we have indeed learned something new:  If you want to grill your falafel, put some meat in it.

It's possible that I simply have the wrong ratio here.  Maybe what's needed is half a box of falafel to a pound of ground beef.  (We certainly had enough food to go around — there are five patties left over.)  But there are many other mix-ins left to try.   I'm going to try a number of commercial veggie burger type things before I move to from-scratch options that are more complicated than "cook lentils, mix in."

Yeah, I know, I could just make meatloaf burgers.  But I already know what those taste like.  I'm trying to move into new territory (and beanier territory — we usually already serve our burgers with bread, I don't see how adding bread crumbs is the best nutritional extra.)