By Peter Brockway –
Mrs. Brockway and I were perusing the menu in a local restaurant when we came upon an offering for Lamb Sliders. Since we had already ordered something else, we didn’t get a chance to try the on this occasion, but it gave us the idea to try fabricating something of a similar nature on our own. We don’t know how they did it at the restaurant, but we decided to try coming up with our version of lamb burgers.
Not wanting to lose the thought, we stopped at the grocery store on our way home to buy the ingredients and got to work that evening. We served the burgers with grilled eggplant, which we brushed with a homemade Dijon mustard vinaigrette. The eggplant slices and burgers took about the same time to cook on the grill. In place of eggplant, you could, of course, sandwich your lamb/veal burger between a fresh bun brushed with a little oil or butter and heated on the grill. This is the way the restaurant served it.
We formed the mixture into patties since there were only two of us and froze the rest, but for a larger group the same mixture in a loaf pan would make a good meat loaf. We served the burgers with a nice Pinot Noir and felt like we were eating in a fine restaurant.
Lamb and Veal Burgers
1 pound ground lamb
1 pound ground veal
½ pound ground pork (optional, adds some fat)
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
2 eggs
1 cup plain bread crumbs
5-6 dashes of Worcestershire sauce
2-3 dashes of Sriracha sauce (This is optional but it adds a little zing. Be careful. It’s hot. You can always add more after the tasting step. If you don’t happen to have Sriracha sauce on hand, a bit of finely chopped jalapeno would work well)
Salt and pepper to taste.
Sauté chopped onion until translucent and just starting to brown. Remove to a side dish. In the same pan sauté garlic until translucent (I sauté the garlic separately from the onions because they cook at different rates). Add to the onions. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well (hands are best mixing tool). When mixed, fry a very small tasting patty in the pan used for onions so that you can test seasonings and adjust as needed. There are two tasting patties here because I tried one with Worcestershire sauce and one with Madeira. Mrs. Brockway and I both liked the one with Worcestershire better, but Madeira was also good. Another option would be Cognac. Enjoy!
F&M