(8) Healthy and Money-Saving Hamburger

You must suspect that why I describe hamburger as something healthy and money saving, which is totally opposite from the reality. A lot of people love hamburgers, the worldwide delicious dish. However, a good hamburger must use quality meat and fat and it leads to high calorie. Besides, being influenced by western culture, we are used to eat hamburgers with bread, French fries, smashed potato, lots of seasonings, drinks which are usually soda, and little vegetables. These entire elements makes hamburger becomes an evil which has an attractive appearance and impresses the public with the prejudice and disadvantages of hamburger.

It seems that I am trying to defend hamburger? Maybe it is also one of the reasons I want to introduce the recipe.

Mouths ago, one of my favored TV programs called “料理東西軍” showed the recipe.

“料理東西軍” is a definitely a cruel reality show and I always be tortured by it. Most strangely is that I can't not help but keep watching this program. The main context is that in every show, there are two chefs compete with each other, both of them have to cook a similar dish (for example, Chinese cuisine versus Chinese cuisine or pasta versus pasta) and try to win other guests’ minds. During the progress they tries their best to drive you crazy (because you are not assured to eat the dish) by the delicious food and selected ingredients. In the end of the program, the guests vote for their preference and the majority can enjoy the dish while the minority stares ay them without anything to eat.

The topic was “a low calorie meal in summer” on the very day I saw this recipe.

The chef replaced part of meat with tofu (the dry and hard one which is common in traditional markets) and substitute part of animal fat for green bean noodles. Besides, he added cabbage in it to improve the diversity of texture.

This is the approximate quantity of ingredients:

Cabbage: 100g
Tofu: 180g
Meat: 150g
One egg
Salt, peppers and other seasonings as you like

Before mix them together, remember to dry the tofu or it is hard to shape the hamburger. You can find something (a pan or a mug, it doesn’t have to be very heavy) to press the tofu or simply put it in a microwave for one or two minutes.

The chef suggested that once you start to cook the hamburger in a pan, don’t flip it until it shaped. Besides, if you have an oven and extra time, after both sides of the hamburgers are shaped, wrap them with aluminum foil then put into the oven. The finished product will be much more juicy and tender than the pan-fried one.

You can make lot of is and store them in the freezer. No matter adding cheese and ketchup as an Italian style dish, pan frying them as bruch served in a decent coffee shop, roast it in American way, or stew it as Chinese traditional dish “紅燒獅子頭”, there are many ways to enjoy it.

The taste of it is no as heavy as the traditional hamburgers and it’s a good way to make a change when you are tire of it. It saves not only your money but also your figure.