Saturday, March 10, 2012

Save Money - Make Your Own Sandwich Patties For Emergency Food Storage

I make my own veggie burger patties for my emergency food storage and freeze them. They are not hard to make. They are much cheaper than getting them already made from the store. I think people who want to have meat patties or hamburgers could use my pattern/recipe for their emergency food storage with little change to it.


Protein is the basis for my choice of what to use for my veggie burger patties. For me that is usually some sort of beans or other legumes which are high in protein. Lentils, and peas are legumes too. 


For people who want meat patties, you can use meat as the main part of your patties. You can add some beans or some of the other items that I put in my veggie burgers to stretch your meat to save money and get better nutrition.


I like some sort of complex carbohydrate in my veggie burgers, because they hold together better and I try to get a full meal of balanced nutrition all in one patty. Whole wheat, brown rice, and potatoes are some of the complex carbohydrates I use. 


Some kind of vegetables round out the nutrition in my veggie burgers and make them more tasty and satisfying as well. That will usually be a seasonal vegetable or vegetables or whatever is handy and cheap.


I put liquids in my veggie burgers and what they are depends on what is handy and cheap. If I am using potatoes in my veggie burgers I use the liquid from cooking the potatoes in the veggie burgers. The potato liquids are sticky and gooey and help hold the veggie burgers together. 


I pick some things especially to help hold the veggie burgers together. Eggs are my favorite. I am not a vegan, so I do eat eggs. Vegans might want to figure out what they want to eat that is sticky enough to hold their veggie burgers together besides eggs. Molasses and honey are sticky, but I know some vegans don't like to eat honey.


You don't need much egg to hold a lot of veggie burgers together. I sometimes only need one egg for as many as 60 veggie burgers.


I use a food processor to grind up the ingredients for my veggie burgers and mix them together as well. I put in the protein first and add the complex carbohydrates next. I usually have everything in bowls or on big plates so I can easily keep adding more ingredients as the food processor mixes and grinds.


I use vegetable oil in a large skillet to fry the veggie burger patties. I lightly brown them, mostly for taste and appearance, since everything is already cooked before I start grinding the ingredients for the veggie burgers.


I usually have a lot of patties shaped on big plates so I can add them to the large skillet as I remove the cooked ones onto clean plates. I usually let them cool on the plates, because I don't have enough racks to cool that many veggie burgers.


Once the veggie burgers are cool, they can be packaged in plastic bags. I like to put several burgers in small zipper bags and then put several small zipper bags full into a larger zipper bag. They don't get freezer burn as easily that way and are easier to find and less of a mess in the freezer that way.


Each veggie burger patty has all the foods necessary for a balanced meal in it. That means you don't need to cook anything else with it to have a healthy diet during an emergency. If you have bread to make a sandwich of your veggie burger patty, that is not necessary, but it might make you feel better to eat it that way instead of by itself.


I eat my veggie burgers on a bed of rice or pasta or with a baked potato and a vegetable or two for regular meals. You could do the same during an emergency as well. (They would not have to be heated if defrosted ahead of time.) They are also nice with a salad and some type of bread and or soup.


When I plan ahead enough for regular meals I take the veggie burgers out of the freezer and defrost them. A meal after that can be as simple as a couple of slices of bread or buns and some lettuce or sprouts and condiments. This is nice to do when I am really busy. It would work fine for emergencies too.



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