A week or so ago, I mentioned having acquired a dozen tins of nice, clean, Norwegian sardines, skinless and boneless and packed in olive oil. I had the idea of using them in burgers that are partly sardines and partly legumes. They’re good!
Though the garden here has oodles of basil every summer (because I think of basil more as a vegetable than as an herb), I’ve never had such a good supply of fresh herbs as I have this year. I included lots of basil and parsley in the burgers. Because I’m not particularly fond of fishy flavors, I used every sort of compatible strong flavor that I could think of to season the burgers — onions, cumin, garlic powder, Trader Joe’s mushroom umami seasoning, smoked paprika, food yeast, and toasted sesame oil. The peas were frozen. I used an egg as binder. The burgers tasted more like veggie burgers than fish burgers.
Though I do eat eggs and dairy, I eat very little meat. For vegans especially, if they care to extend their range a bit, sardines are a good source of one of the nutrients that vegans can become dangerously deficient in — vitamin B12. Sardines also have lots of iodine, as well as a lipid profile that is as good as it gets. Sardines are low on the food chain. They live on plankton. When sardines come from the cold northern oceans, they’re low on the pollutants that affect some fish higher on the food chain.
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