Skater Lunchbox #28

Half a Beyond Burger, steamed broccoli stems, onion gravy, and vegan macaroni in a creamy (not quite cheesy) sauce.

Have you ever had a Beyond Burger? I give this to you in caps because the brand actually matters. This burger is unlike really any veggie burger out there. I don't even know what to say. I only know that it looks like a raw beef burger, and then you cook it, and the beet juice and coconut oil bubbles up and flows away, and it looks like it is bleeding, and then it browns and it looks like a cooked burger, and then you bite into it and it feels and tastes like meat in a way that almost never happens in your vegan world.

And so it seemed a good candidate for that most homey of cuisine, a hamburger steak. It is distinct from Salisbury steak in my head, though when I describe it to people without familiarity with Southern food, they say it sounds like Salisbury steak. But it just isn't that to me. In any case: for hamburger steak, cover a hamburger in onion gravy, maybe with mushrooms, and voila! Steak!

Also in the land of attempting to be more frugal, I decided to try cooking up the broccoli stems left over from a time I was using the florets. They should be cooked separately, rather than together as was so often the case in my childhood, because the stems need more time. But the stems are lovely, oddly shaped things that go well with this kind of meal.

Finally, I had frozen half of the sauce last time I made this creamy-but-not-cheesy sauce, and I was afraid it might not work well that way, but it did amazingly well. So thanks for cooking, past me!