Bachelor Cooking - Chilli Burgers

January 15, 2010 2 Comments

A nice easy recipe to cook a simple burger, excellent in a lovely sandwich. This is a basic recipe and can be added to with other ingredients as and how you require depending on what you like to eat. My personal favourites apart from this one are parmesan and herbs and (perhaps oddly) asparagus and mint if using lamb mince (note that if you make burgers using lamb mince don’t use extra lean mince as the fat will help the lamb bind).

Ingredients:

Mince - I use extra lean and this particular packet was 400g
Chillies - Just take a few of your favourites at whatever hotness you like
Garlic - 2 cloves
Small onion (I only use half of the one shown here)
Paprika
Chives - these ones are dried
Salt and Pepper
Butter (cooking oil will suffice)
For this one I also used a Chilli infused olive oil

1ingredients

How to:
Start by chopping the onion nice and fine, take your time here and make sure you don’t leave any big chunks

2choponions

Now melt a small piece of butter in a pan

3meltbutter

add the finely chopped onions

4onions

While the onions are very lightly frying chop up the chillis

5chillies

Take the onion off the heat and grab a mixing bowl.

Add the mince

6mince

Add the two cloves of garlic crushed (if you don’t have a garlic press crush them with the edge of your knife and then cut finely)

7garlic

Add the chopped chillies

8chillies

Add a sprinkle of chives - a lot if you like them, less so if you don’t

9chives

Season with salt and pepper - this is to taste so as much as you like really, but put in less and see the ‘Quick Tip’ below.

10saltandpepper

Add a helping of paprika

11paprika

Add the lightly cooked onions

12onions

Now comes the fun part where you get to squeeze the mixture together. Don’t use a spoon, you need to get your hands in there. So, wash your hands and simply dive in there and squeeze the mixture together as hard as you can. Imagine you were trying to get every last drop of water out of a wet sponge. mix. mix. mix some more.

There’s no need to be shy here, you have to be a little rough if you want the burgers to hold themselves together during cooking. You’re not making a light crumble here, you’re making good old fashioned burgers.

Squeeze just a little bit more.

Now wash your hands again.

13squeeze

Quick Tip
Fry up a little bit of the freshly squeezed mixture and taste it now. Does it need more salt and pepper? More chives? More Paprika?

If so - add it now and go back to the mixing.

Now comes for the actual burger making. I like a large burger, so the mixture here made two decent sized ones. It makes 3 smaller ones okay, but 4 are a little too small for my liking. So, let’s go ahead and make 2.

Halve the mixture and shape it into a ball in your hands

14rollmeat

Once rolled you need to shape them into the burger. For this I start by slamming it down, not too roughly - as if you were pushing a buzzer on a quiz show, onto a chopping board. I guess the natural gravity in this helps to start the circular shape

15dropmeat

Now push down on the meat to really flatten it out into a burger shape

16pushpatty

Once you’re done you should have something resembling a burger, and about an inch in height. Make sure it’s as even as possible so that it will cook equally throughout

17burgershaped

Looking good. Now transfer to a plate and put in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Don’t miss that step I just mentioned…it needs to go into the fridge and stay there for 30 minutes. The burger will often crumble when cooking otherwise.

Go watch an episode of Friends, open a beer, or just wash up the dishes you have used so far…but not the frying pan, you’ll be using that shortly!

30 minutes later…

Take some of that chilli infused olive oil and add a couple of teaspoons to the pan. Once heated, add the burger(s)

18heatoil

While it’s cooking you’ll need to flip it a couple of times - try 2 minutes on one side, flip, 2 minutes, flip, 2 minutes, flip and finally, 2 minutes, done.

19flipburger