Friday, September 30, 2011

What does a vegetarian do with a meat grinder?

I love my stand mixer. Recently in an op shop I spotted an attachment for it: a meat grinder. Although they're not that rare (you do see attachments on eBay -- they can be pricey) I was so surprised to find it that I bought it right away without thinking about what I would use it for.

Quite some internet research later, I read that you can grind chickpeas for falafel with a meat grinder. And so I did. The falafel worked out really well. I convinced myself that this was because of the excellent texture, but it may well have been because the previous few times I've made falafel I have wimped out and baked them in the oven, and this time I (shallow-)fried them. Another vote in favour of the meat grinder was that it was really fun to throw the chickpeas, parsley and garlic into the hopper and have them come out homogeneous. (Okay, that happens when you use the food processor too, but I swear this was more fun.)

Emboldened, I ground some seitan, and some cauliflower, and made a version of larb with cauliflower 'rice' from Stone Soup. This was delicious! We had a green mango salad alongside (sort of along these lines).
Overall, I'm happy to have the meat grinder. It's a bit of a hassle to clean, but not that much worse than a food processor. I like that the stuff you grind comes out a uniform size. I also like that you can grind a large amount. I think the next thing I'm going to try is bigoli.