Vegan Curry Chickpea Patties and Instant Pot Batch Cooking - How To Cook Delicious Meal

Batch prepping ingredients like grains and potatoes is so helpful in keeping up with a whole food vegan diet. You can eat these items as a snack, add them to any meal, or create brand new recipes like these curry chickpea patties!

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Mixed Grains in the Instant Pot

Today I'm talking about how to batch prep  a couple of different items so that you're always prepared and always have healthy foods on hand.

We're going to be making some whole grains as well as some sweet potatoes, and then at the end  we're going to take those batch cooked ingredients and create a recipe out of it.

We're going to make  some curry chickpea patties.

Now full disclosure, I've never made this “recipe” before.

This is how  most of my food is made, I just throw some things together and hope it turns out okay.

And not  to toot my own horn, but it usually does turn out pretty well.

And if you've been eating this  way for a while you'll understand what I mean, but if you're new to whole food vegan eating just  know that once your taste buds have adjusted, you'll be able to taste all of the nuanced flavors  of natural foods, and really anything can go with anything.

So as long as you know some spices that  you like, you can throw any veggies, whole grains, and beans together and you'll usually be able  to come up with something pretty good.

So we'll find out together at the end of the video if these  are any good.

We're going to start with our batch cooking though, so first things first we're going  to make a mixture of whole grains.

I like to make a mixture of grains because I think the more  diversity of plants in your diet the better.

I know a lot of people will just batch prep like  rice, for example, and then eat it all week, but I also like to do this mixture of grains so it's  just a little more interesting than plain rice.

So today I'm actually going to be mixing rice  and sorghum.

I'm using a short grain brown rice, which I'm sure you're familiar with brown  rice, and then sorghum is my other grain which you may not be as familiar with.

So here  you can see the difference.

This is the sorghum here, it's a little more round than the brown  rice.

I'm using a six quart Instant Pot and I have one cup of the short grain brown rice and  one cup of the sorghum which I've already rinsed.

Then I'm adding five cups of water.

Whenever you're cooking multiple grains together  just make sure you're picking grains that have a similar cook time.

For the rice and sorghum  I'm going to do 27 minutes at high pressure.

If you're unfamiliar with using an Instant  Pot, make sure your valve is in the sealing position, and then it will take about 10 to 15  minutes to come up to pressure before it cooks for the time that you set.

And for this I'll  usually let it natural release for at least 10 to 15 minutes and then if there's any remaining  pressure I'll go ahead and quick release that.

Sweet Potatoes in the Instant Pot

Next up we're going to batch cook some  sweet potatoes in our Instant Pot.

This time I'm using my three quart Instant Pot and  that's just because I only have one six quart and one three quart, but you could definitely use  a six or even an eight quart to do your sweet potatoes and you can batch cook even more at  once.

So for the sweet potatoes we're going to use the trivet that came with the Instant  Pot.

You'll want to add about a cup of water, and the water is what allows the pressure to build  so that your potatoes will cook.

And then I take a fork and I poke the potato just a few times to  let the steam release.

Now I've heard some people say you don't have to do this when you cook your  potatoes in the Instant Pot, but it takes five seconds and so I just do it just in case.

And then  we'll take our potatoes and simply layer them in however they fit ,and then again we'll  put the lid on and make sure our valve is set to the sealing position.

Now when you're  cooking sweet potatoes the time will depend on how large the potatoes are.

These are pretty  small, so I think I'll do 15 minutes at high pressure and then let it natural release for about  10 minutes and release any remaining pressure.

How to Use Batch Prepped Food

Alright so my sweet potatoes and my mixture of  rice and sorghum are done cooking.

When you're done cooking the grains there will be a little  extra liquid, so I just drained that off before putting it in my storage container.

So then what  I'll do is I'll let these cool and store them in the fridge.

These are great to use throughout  the week either as a snack or as a base to a meal.

I always include whole grains with every  meal so having them batch cooked like this is really helpful.

You can just scoop out a portion  and eat it with whatever soup, stew, stir-fry, or even salad that you're eating.

Same goes for  the potatoes.

You can add them to anything really.

One thing I did want to mention about the potatoes  is I'm planning to use them as a mash so I overcooked these a little bit.

If you were wanting  to use them for something else you might cook them for a shorter time in the Instant Pot.

Some  people like to pre-cook them just a little bit in the Instant Pot and then they use them  later in the week to make french fries.

That way you can chop them up into wedges and either  air fry or bake them and it goes a lot quicker.

Curry Chickpea Patty Recipe

Alright so now it's time to make our curry  chickpea patties.

Now this is a little more complicated recipe than I normally would do, but  it's so much easier when you've already batch cooked these ingredients.

So this isn't something  that I would do all at once like we're doing here today by first batch cooking the grains and the  sweet potatoes and then making these patties.

Instead this would be something that I would just  throw together during the week with the stuff I had already batch cooked.

So it makes these  slightly more complicated recipes a lot easier.

Alright so here are all of our ingredients.

 I'm going to start with the chickpeas.

This is a cup and a half of cooked chickpeas, so  it's about the equivalent of a can of chickpeas.

You could definitely use that as well.

And then  I'm using a potato masher just to break them up just a little bit.

You don't want  to completely mash the chickpeas, you just want to break them up a little bit  so that you have a little different texture.

So you'll have some big pieces  and some more mashed pieces.

Next I'm going to add a cup of the  sweet potato that we pre-cooked, and I'll mash that a little bit as well.

Then I'm going to take a cup  of our cooked whole grain.

And now I'll add in our spices.

I'll put all the  measurements down in the description box below, but right here I have a half a teaspoon  each of garlic and onion powder, a teaspoon of curry powder, and about  a quarter teaspoon of black pepper.

And then I'm going to add some rolled oats.

I'm going to start with about a half a  cup, I'll tell you what I end up using in the description box below.

And I'm also going  to add a little bit of flaxseed.

This will help bind it together a little bit.

I'm going to do  two tablespoons, and then I'll start mixing.

I'm just going to add maybe a quarter cup  more oats and then I think that'll be good.

This smells really good.

So usually when you're making a bean and grain  patty like this, they should hold together pretty well but if you let the mixture sit for a little  bit it'll help even more.

So if you wanted to take the time you could put this in the refrigerator  for maybe 30 minutes to let it set up.

But I'm not patient enough for that, and if my  patties fall apart a little bit I don't really care because it's all going to the same place  and it's all going to taste delicious either way.

So that's what our mixture looks like and  we're going to go ahead and form that into patties and bake it.

So there's really no  way around this you're going to have to get your hands a little dirty, that's the best  way to make patties.

And I got this little trick from Rachael Ray actually.

She always  scores the mixture in however many patties you want to make.

I'm going to make eight  patties because I like smaller patties, but you could make them larger if you want.

 So now we know about how big each one will be, and we can just take the mixture  and form it into a little patty.

And this is a pretty sticky mixture so your hands  are gonna get nice and messy, but that's okay it's more fun that way.

Alright so here are our patties.

I'm going  to bake these in a 400 degree Fahrenheit oven.

I'm going to start with about 15 to 20  minutes on the first side, and then I'll take them out see where they're at, and if they're  ready to be flipped, I will flip them and then bake another probably 15 to 20 minutes.

 I'll let you know at the end the total time.

Alright my patties are out of  the oven now so let's take a look.

So they smell delicious and they hold together  pretty well.

I ended up baking them about 20 minutes on the first side and 15 minutes on  the second side, and they look really nice.

So one side got nice and crispy and the other side not so  much, but you can cook it however much you want.

So I'll just make myself a plate I also just  steamed some purple kale, I guess technically it's actually called red kale even though it's  purple.

It's kind of like purple cabbage is actually red cabbage.

I never understood that.

And  I'm just gonna put a little balsamic vinegar on the kale, and then I think I'll also eat an  apple.

That will be my simple little meal.

Taste Test

Alright and then now moment of truth.

The  taste test.

It looks really nice on the inside, I like you can see there's a little piece of  chickpea, there's little chunks of sweet potato.

You know what? That is not bad.

Now these are  SOS-free.

So there's no salt, oil, or sugar in these.

If you wanted to, if you do eat salt, you  could add a little salt to these, but I think this is good just like this.

Of course you could eat  these on a bun if you wanted to.

It's difficult to find a good bun that doesn't have a lot of added  stuff in it.

Sometimes I'll just use something like Ezekiel bread which is pretty clean, and I  also love just using pita pockets.

I found these pita pockets from a place online called Shiloh  Farms and these are just whole wheat flour, water, yeast, and they do have salt, so if you  are completely SOS-free, these might not work.

But I just like eating them by themselves too.

 You can also add condiments if you want.

You know what would be really good with this would  be to make a vegan mayo with silken tofu, dijon mustard.

That would make a really good  topping for this.

So I'm going to go ahead and go eat this now.

Let me know if you liked  this video, let me know if you have other ideas for things you'd like to see me try to make.

 Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.