First, check out my Ride & Review HERE:
When my wife and I first walked by here, they let us try some falafel for free. It was delicious, so we were sold. I ran it back when using the Too Good to Go app, and for $7 I got this awesome box of chicken shawarma over rice with a salad.
I’ll definitely be back to try more stuff, especially the Philly cheesesteak. I’ve been searching for a good one in the area.
ZAAD
250 Broome St.
New York, NY 10002
I should say up front that I initially intended this recipe to involve lamb rather than beef, so feel free to swap out the protein. Shit, you can even go with ground turkey if you want. What the fuck do I care?
Anyway, the grocery store that’s on my way home from work didn’t have ground lamb, and I wasn’t about to break out the Kitchenaid stand mixer and grind up the lamb chops that they DID have for some $20+. Also, I didn’t feel like going to Whole Foods and waiting on a line filled with granola-eating vegans to procure said ground lamb (Whole Foods has everything – it really is awesome… just always crowded with food Nazis). All that said, I went with ground beef. About half a pound of ground chuck, to be exact. Under $3.
My idea for this came to me when I was trying to decide what I wanted for dinner. I was thinking or ordering a burger from a local steakhouse, but I was also craving falafel. So I decided to combine the two desires into one. Behold, the beefalafel burger:
It’s a really simple recipe, with an incredibly delicious end-result.
*Note* as I mentioned above, feel free to swap the ground beef out for something else. Also, you can play with the ratios. If you add more meat, you will have a beefier final result that leans more toward the burger side than the falafel side. This recipe ratio – with a half pound of beef to one packet of falafel – yields four burger patties that are somewhat more falafel-ish than burger-ish. However, they are WAY more juicy than your typical no-beef falafel.
First, I’m going to pop my time-lapse cooking demo into the post here, that way you can see for yourself how the steps unfold. It’s really fucking easy.
So now that you’ve seen it made, here’s the step-by-step:
STEP 1: Make The Sauce
Cut up a few cloves of garlic. Sautee the garlic in a pan with olive oil and lemon juice until they get softened and the mixture starts to get slightly brown. Allow this to cool. Place a few tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt into a small dipping bowl and add some spices to your taste. I like cracked black pepper, oregano and crushed red pepper. Once cooled, add your garlic, olive oil and lemon juice combo into the yogurt from your pan. Mix thoroughly and set aside for later.
STEP 2: Make The Falafel
Prepare your falafel according to the instructions on the packet. If you’re industrious, feel free to make your own falafel from scratch. I go with the packets because they are easy as fuck, and they taste perfectly delicious to me. Besides, all that’s really involved here is adding a cup of water to the falafel powder and then mixing the shit into a fucking paste.
STEP 3: Add The Ground Beef
Mix your half pound of ground beef into the falafel paste and get the meat particles evenly distributed throughout the falafel.
STEP 4: Make The Burger Patties
Form four equi-sized burger patties on some wax paper. Step four is fucking one line of text. Don’t fuck it up.
STEP 5: Fry The Burgers In Vegetable Oil
Add your vegetable oil (1 & 3/4 cups, thereabout) into a frying pan and crank the heat. Once it’s hot enough for frying, place your burgers into the pan. When the patties turn to a dark brown color on the bottom, it’s time to flip (maybe 5 minutes). When both sides are done, take them out of the oil and place them on a drying rack or a bed of paper towels.
STEP 6: Assemble The Burgers
While you’re waiting for the oil to get hot, you can slice your tomato, red onion, and feta cheese, and rinse your arugula. When you’re ready to go, smear some of your yogurt sauce onto each half of the bun. Be generous, too. This shit is actually pretty healthy. Add your burger, onions, cheese crumbles, tomato and arugula. Close that bitch up and eat! I like to slice mine in half for easy mouth-shoving.
As you can see, this leans a bit more on the falafel side than the burger side. Add more meat and you’ll see some pink in there for a nice medium.
This is a great way to stretch your supply if you’ve only got a small amount of ground beef left from an earlier meal. It’s also a smart way to cut down on the fat and red meat if you’re dieting, without sacrificing flavor. Lastly, it is really budget-friendly. For about $15 you can feed four people. Not bad! And you can make a salad with the rest of your arugula, tomato, feta and onion, if the burger itself doesn’t fill you up. Just make some extra yogurt sauce to use as a salad dressing.
Here’s a throw-back few pics from one of the great falafel joints in Manhattan, Mamoun’s. This place is a must-do for late night food binging. Get on this shit and put it down without looking back. Awesome.
