You don’t think of home made burgers as a quick dinner option, but these really are. It takes all of 5 minutes to get prepped: have your ingredients to hand, a food processor (or even a decent knife to chop everything together) at the ready, a smoking griddle pan, the accoutrements all prepared (soft split bun, washed lettuce, sliced tomatoes, Greek yoghurt). Then it’s only 2 minutes to whizz them up, 3 minutes to shape, 10 minutes to fry, and 5 minutes to rest/assemble. That’s not much is it? (I left out the 30 minutes to chill in the fridge but that can be spent drinking tea and eating biscuits if you like.) Lamb mince is really fatty, so you could grill (or even better BBQ), but by using a griddle pan you can pour off a lot of the fat. Anyway, we all know that it’s the fat that makes burgers so tasty, so a little bit is needed.
I added redcurrant jelly, dried mint, dried oregano and worcestershire sauce (this combination of condiments is stolen from Nigella’s Lamb Ragu recipe in the amazing Nigellissima book, a personal fave of mine). These flavours, all natural bedfellows of lamb, produce sweet and aromatic little meaty treats. Add chilli too if you’re not feeding little kids. My 10 month old found them to be very agreeable finger food, broken up into chunks.
For the skinnies out there, try using a lettuce leaf as a bun, it’s a nice way to enjoy a burger and shave some calories off. I can vouch for this as I gave it a whirl – as well as eating several bread bun burgers too obviously.
Makes: 10 little burgers or 6 large ones
Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 10 minutes (plus 30 minutes chill time)
Total time: 45 minutes
Ingredients:
1 red onion
4 cloves of garlic
450g lamb mince, preferably organic or at least a good quality brand
1 teaspoon of dried mint
1 teaspoon of dried oregano
2 teaspoons of redcurrant jelly
2 teaspoons of worcestershire sauce
1 egg
Good pinch of salt
To serve
Soft burger buns
Little gem lettuce
Sliced vine tomatoes
Greek yoghurt (it’s good with some garlic finely grated in and little salt added)
Instructions:
- Pulse the onion, garlic until finely chopped. Add your egg, meat, spices and condiments. Pulse – but only to combine – you don’t want meat puree! Get your hands in to further mix if you so as not to create an overly pureed consistency.
- Shape into balls and chill for at least half an hour.
- Preheat your pan / grill until smoking hot. If your pan is hot enough, they won’t stick.
- Fry them on each side for 5 minutes, a little more if bigger. Don’t keep moving them around! This will just cook them on the point. It’s safe to eat lamb pink so feel free to have them a little rarer if you like.
