College Cuisine: Roast Beetroot Falafel Burger with Tahini Sauce

SERC staff and students are keeping their cookery and baking skills as sharp as their kitchen knives with weekly food recipes designed to tantalise the taste buds.

This week’s recipe shows you how to make your own Roast Beetroot Falafel Burger with Tahini Sauce. This recipe is vegan and gluten free. The recipe is as follows:

Ingredients (Falafel Patties) 

• 2 beetroots (about the size of a tennis ball) 
• 2 large cloves of garlic  
• 250g cooked chickpeas 
• 1 handful of fresh coriander 
• 1 tbsp ground coriander
• 1 heaped tsp ground cumin 
• 1 tsp sea salt 

Ingredients (Tahini Sauce) 

• 250g tahini (sesame seed paste) 
• 1 tsp garlic (minced)  
• ½ tsp Diamond Crystal kosher salt 
• 1 tbsp olive oil 
• 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice 
• 6 tbsp water 
• 2 tbsp parsley (finely chopped) 

Method: (Tahini Sauce) 

1. Place the tahini, garlic, salt, olive oil, lemon juice and water in a medium size bowl. Whisk with a hand whisk until smooth. 
2. Use a rubber spatula to mix in the parsley. 
3. You can either serve immediately or cover and refrigerate until needed. (Tahini sauce will keep for about 5 days in the fridge.) If your sauce thickens in the fridge, you can add a small amount of water (about a tbsp at a time) until it reaches the desired consistency. 

Method: (Beetroot Falafel Patties) 

Top tip: We recommend doing the first two steps the night before to save time, especially if you’re already using the oven for something else.   

1. Slice the top off the beetroots and discard. Chop the remaining beetroot into cubes (about 1.5cm cubed in size.) 
2. Bake the beetroot in the oven on a baking tray for about 45 minutes on a high heat. When done, take out and leave to cool until you are ready to make the falafels.  
3. When your beetroot is ready, add all ingredients into a food processor and blend until everything has broken down. It doesn’t need to be completely pureed, just broken down into tiny pieces so that when you compress the mix, everything binds together.  
4. Roll your beetroot mix into balls (a bit smaller than a golf ball in size)  
5. Press the balls down into mini patty shapes. 
6. Place onto a grill tray and grill on a medium or low heat for about 8 minutes on either side. (you can also oven bake these instead if you wish.) 
7. Serve straight away with your tahini sauce and choice of side salad.  

This recipe is vegan and gluten free, but if you aren’t gluten-sensitive you may wish to serve these in traditional baps. 

These recipes would not be possible without the hard work of SERC’s catering staff, who strive to create excellent meals as well as maintaining a Microsoft Teams page for these recipes to be shared between staff and students. If you are interested in cooking at a professional level, please click here to view our full time Hospitality and Catering courses.  

Apply now for courses commencing September 2020. For more information visit www.serc.ac.uk to find out how you could be #BetterOffAtSERC

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