Grechaniki

Grechaniki - authentic Ukrainian dish which resembles a patty made of cooked buckwheat mixed with other ingredients. Here is a vegan version of it, popular in Ukraine during a lent period. 

Authentic version of this dish often includes some kind of meat mixed with buckwheat, but for the period of lent, meat is replaced with vegetables - cooked carrots, onion, mushrooms, potato. Called in Ukraine grechaniki, I have translated them as patties, but perhaps more appropriate would be to call them veggie-buckwheat burgers. 

Notes

- Recipe calls for small amount of oil for frying, but you can easily avoid oil altogether and fry grechaniki on a dry skillet. If you stick to whole-food-plant-based-no-oil way of eating, it is just what you need - delicious food without additional oil! 

- I like to use buckwheat from Eastern European groceries - it is raw, toasted and, after you cook it, has great texture and flavor. You will never get that delicious buckwheat kasha using buckwheat from our regular American supermarket. Those who tried, knows what I'm talking about. Although for the purpose of this recipe, regular supermarket buckwheat may work as, when cooked, it has wet and mushy consistency somewhat helpful when you make patties.

- Traditionally they served hot, with sour cream. As I'm dairy-free now, I love to eat them with tahini sauce or hummus.

- As an option replace half of potato amount with mashed sweet potato.

- Mushrooms are optional. When I don't have mushrooms I just omit then and add a little granulated garlic and onion, a teaspoon of each, to add more flavor.

Grechaniki - Ukrainian Buckwheat Patties

• 3 cups cooked buckwheat
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, coarsely grated
• 16 oz pack of white or other mushrooms (optional)
• 3 potatoes, peeled, cooked and mashed
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1/3 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp oil for frying (avocado oil)

- On a dry skillet (or lightly oiled), cook onion until soft, add carrot and continue to cook until soft. If needed add a splash of water.

- In a small pot, bring water to a boil, then put whole mushrooms and cook 5-7 minutes. Drain.

- In a kitchen processor, pulse onion, carrot and mushrooms until finely chopped.

- In a large bowl, place all ingredients - buckwheat, mashed potato, processed cooked onion, carrot, mushrooms, salt and black pepper and mix it all together nicely until you will get sticky mixture that you can make patties out of it.

- Make patties and cook them on slightly oiled heated skillet on both sides. They also can be baked in an oven at 400F until golden-brown. In this case you don't need oil at all, just place patties on a parchment paper and bake until crispy on outside.

- Enjoy!



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IN PICTURES

 I like to use my electric grinder as it allows to keep nice texture. Here is I'm running carrots and onion right into a large bowl where I transferred already my mashed potato in. Boiled mushrooms are waiting their turn..

 All ingredients are here.

 You can see that mixture holds together thanks to a mashed potato. If your mixture is still dry and falls apart, I would recommend to run half of mixture in a processor.

 I like to use my handy scooping tool.

 Here I fry patties on a dry skillet for myself. For others I cooked them on a little splash of avocado oil. I can tell you, there was no noticeable difference between them. So why extra calories :)

 Great texture but still holds together.

 Here grechaniki served with hummus. See my previous post how to make healthy, quick and delicious hummus.

 This (and next two pictures) are grechaniki made without mushrooms, with sweet and regular potatoes. These were baked in an oven. Delicious and healthy! I also didn't use processor - just mashed cooked potatoes with potato masher and then added all remaining ingredients continuing mashing. Turns out really nice chunky/creamy texture.