so i had a vegan relative come over for dinner, and because I can't stand her, I decided to try out one of jack's recipes for her.
it was the 9p / 17p Carrot, Cumin & Kidney Bean Burger.
first of all, the only way I could've gotten the same pricing as jack would be by buying tiny portions of everything, meaning i was only able only to cook three normal sized burgers or four half sized burgers. if i'd brought everything in bulk, it would've easily pushed me over £30.
first, the kidney beans were to be washed (to get rid of the tinned taste? i have never tasted tin), then boiled for ten minutes. this made the resulting paste extremely watery, and i actually threw them out and started again, this time only boiling them for 5-6 minutes and they came out better.
i then had to set up another burner to sautee the carrots and onions, she recommended adding cumin and coriander, but i replaced the cumin with paprika, as there just was no taste to the mush after i'd finished cooking. think baby food. jack calls it "mashed potato" consistency, but unless she was adding some butter or cornflour on the side as it cooked, there was no way you were getting that consistency. after stirring in the flour, it ended up more like clumps rather than a smooth mashed potato consistency, and i didn't even add the full amount of flour.
clearly with all this, i knew it was going to be fucking hard to work it into a burger shape. it kept squishing through my fingers, like kid's slime. i ended up mixing a fuck ton of cornflour and an egg into it and only then did it bind and allow itself to be worked into a burger. i got three 2.4-ounce burgers out of it, then squished it all back together and got four burgers that weighed roughly 1.9-ounces each.
i served them to my relative on challah buns, with vegan mayo. jack doesn't specify what she served her goy slop on, but they look like seasoned buns, with lettuce and some strange red paste underneath. my buns came out cheaper than buying them (i make my dough in bulk) and the vegan mayo was supplied by my relative, she declined vegetables in the burger.
but the taste! that is what you beautiful kiwis are most interested in. she described the taste as "nonexistent", with the texture of reheated baby food. she only ate two, and asked if i thought she had an eating disorder because of the tiny portion sizes. i ate one of the ones she left, and even with the change from cumin to paprika, there was no taste. i understand this is supposed to be just slop that you can eat on a tiny budget, but even so. you'd be better off just having those mealcubes.
the pricing:
so i went to lidl. i think jack went to asda, but my nearest asda is fucking miles away. i only brought the cheapest, lidl-own brand stock, and brought the smallest portions of everything. so literally one carrot, one 150g bag of flour.
but even then, going to lidl, the tiny portions racked up to a rough cost of
46p per burger. that's literally if i divide the price of the kidney beans by the weight of the drained beans. a far cry from 7p or 17p, and considering lidl (and asda!) sell far larger burgers for close to 20p per burger in their bulk packs.
the energy cost was around £1 according to my smart meter, mainly caused by having to use two burners at once.
overall, it was shit, the recipe needlessly complicated and there were far better options out there. i may take a stab at other jack recipes, just to find the worst.
