Koftas are like meatballs or kebabs with a lot of tasty ingredients – and they don’t even have to have meat in them. But if you like meat, this recipe is a good way to use a small amount of good quality, more expensive meat in an affordable way. This recipe is one third mince, one third sprouted mung beans and one third carbohydrates (breadcrumbs & oats). Sprouts add a crunchy texture and lots of nutrition but can be substituted with tinned/cooked lentils. You can also have a completely lentil kofta with no meat or experiment with using firm tofu or tempeh (broken up into pieces by hand) instead of mince.
At the Hungerford market we demonstrated this recipe with lamb from Emma’s Ewesful Acres and it was very popular. The mince in the photo below is venison.
Ingredients
250gm mince (lamb, beef, venison) – or cooked/tinned lentils or firm tofu/tempeh
250gm sprouted mung beans – or cooked/tinned lentils
250gm combination of breadcrumbs and oats
large bunch of herbs (mint, oregano, chives etc)
1 large lemon, juiced (and the zest as well if you like)
1 onion, finely chopped or 3 – 4 spring onions finely slices
3 cloves garlic, finely diced/pressed
Suggested flavourings:
3 heaped dessertspoon nutritional yeast flakes (optional – can substitute with 1 dessertspoon soya sauce)
2 – 4 heaped dessertspoons smoked paprika
1 heaped dessertspoon cumin
1 level dessertspoon tabasco sauce
1 level dessertspoon worcestershire sauce
Method
1. Roughly chop/blitz mung bean sprouts.
2. Place in a mixing bowl with the carbs (breadcrumbs/oats).
3. Finely chop onion, press garlic, roughly chop herbs and add to the bowl.
4. Juice lemon and add to the mixture, along with all your other flavourings.
5. Add the mince into the bowl and mix well (easiest to tear mince into about small pieces and mix it all together by hand).
6. The final mix looks a bit like stuffing and should feel quite sticky. The breadcrumbs/oats that have absorbed all the lemon juice, tabasco etc is sticking the mixture together.
7. It should be easy to pick up a handful of kofta mixture and shape it how you like. Round patties are easy to cook or you can use a wooden skewer to make a longer ones.
8. Heat a generous amount of oil in a pan (as the koftas don’t have as much fat in them as 100% meat one) on a medium heat as you want the koftas to cook through without burning.
9. Turn when underside is golden brown and then you can flatten them a bit more to speed up cooking.
10. These koftas are super tasty to eat on their own or you can serve with flatbread, hummus, tzatziki, salad etc
