Burgers Kacang Hijau

Jonathan here guest-blogging in what we hope will be a serial feature on cooking as expats in Indonesia.

I like to call it Celebrating the Seasonings. Stephanie squints her eyes closed for half a minute straight but finally admits it's an apt pun.

This week I want to share a recipe for kacang hijau burgers. Below you see, scattered all over the counter when the bag popped like a packing bubble when I dropped it on the counter, are kacang hijau (KAH - chahng hee - JOW). This translates literally to "beans green," and in the West they are known as "mung beans."

Kacang Hijau (average-sized garlic for size reference)

Being busy with so many things here, I need some help in producing this blog. Let me introduce you to a fellow I believe will be a regular: Mr. Weevil.Can you see him in the picture below? He's the little speck in the middle. I discovered the hard way with the first bag of beans I got that you can't just toss the bag in the cupboard and forget about it because in a few days, you have several dozen Mr. Weevils, a great deal of mung powder, and bored-through beans.

Do you see Mr. Weevil?

To prevent this tragedy, wash the beans immediately upon returning from the grocery store and either cook or freeze the beans right after. Mung beans can be treated just like lentils. They do not need to be soaked beforehand like most beans (very convenient), and you do 2:1 liquid to bean. Bring to a boil, back to a simmer, and cook until fairly tender in this recipe. The next picture will give you an idea what the final product looks like.

Boiled Kacang Hijau

Without further ado, here's the recipe itself:

Burgers Kacang Hijau

Ingredients (serves 3 or 4)

• 1 cup dry mung beans, still warm from being cooked as described above (a little over 1 cup cooked)
• 1 cup (or so) filler. I used instant oatmeal. Bread crumbs, crushed crackers etc. good too.
• 3 eggs, beaten
• Powdered milk in water. About 1/2 cup powder barely dissolved to make a slightly watery paste. You can substitute real milk, but don't get too much liquid.
• 1 minced clove of bawang putih (garlic)
• 2 bawang merah (shallots, more on this in an upcoming blog), diced small. Substitute 1/4 cup or so of diced onion.
• A tsp or tbsp of saus Ingriss. Whattayamean you never heard of "saus Ingress"? It's English sauce. You know, Worcestershire sauce. They sell good ol' Lea and Perrins with an Indonesian label here.
• Salt and pepper to taste.

Mix all the above together in the pot with the warm, recently cooked beans. You should end up with this completely unsavory mixture very closely resembling vomit.

Ewwwwww!

The rest is simple. Take a large spoonful of the stuff and toss it in a nice, oiled, heated frying pan. Cook them for a minute or two and flip, and then another minute or so (like pancakes). What you end up with are some really tasty burgers I think are much better than the vast majority of tofu burgers at hippy restaurants in the States. If you'd seen the picture below by itself without explanation, wouldn't you have thought they were just plain old beef patties?

I can't believe it's not Elsie...

What do they taste like? Very meaty, but not like beef. You can eat them on hamburger buns (if you can find them where you live), inside a tortilla (which people don't eat here, but a locla makes for us white people), or just by itself. You can use all sorts of condiments that you would use for a beef hamburger. By the way, you can reserve some of the mix if you think you've cooked enough to feed everyone. It keeps well in the fridge, but does not work quite as well in the frying pan. I guess it doesn't like moving very fast after it's woken up.

One last story. I had hoped to show a picture of how much Stephanie and Toby enjoyed the meal. I whipped out the same camera I'd been using for the above pictures only to find that it had decided to completely freeze up. I had to reboot the thing, and by the time I got it working again, this was all I had to show:

No papa, I did NOT throw any under the table!