Burgerama

Oooshk.

It's birthday weekend, so things are a little crazy round here. I knowingly ate wheat yesterday, but when a 6 year old boy makes you birthday brownies virtually single handed, what can you do?

I made fodmap-friendly burgers though.

Ingredients:
500g pack of minced beef (any mince would do, pork, turkey, whatever works for you)
about 1/4 box of hale and hearty GF breadcrumbs
finely diced red pepper
generous squirt of tomato puree
finely chopped green olives (I used some pre-sliced green olives that I found at Aldi, and chopped them more)
fresh basil, snipped finely.

I don't think I added anything else this time, but you can of course, add stuff to taste.

Mix well, and mould into burgers. After advice from a friend, I used my Kenwood Chef (retro sty-le) to mix the ingredients and I have a burger press (you can get one similar here http://www.lakeland.co.uk/p10481/Burger-Press-and-Accessories - I actually have the one my parents had when I was growing up) which makes things easier. The waxed discs really help.

I made these on a day when I batch made a LOT of stuff, so the mixer and the burger press were really handy because I mixed and pressed something in the order of 30 odd burgers of various kinds and also a batch of meatballs by similar method all on that one day. My friend is GF (and in this instance, that means grain free) and she makes meatballs by the dozen, and she recommended using the Kenwood for the mixing as she said it was much more even than doing it by hand. I would agree, plus it breaks down any lumpy bits of mince. I had equipment lined up down the worktop for that day!

I also made vegetable burgers because I had an excess of potato and carrot. I didn't really measure quantities (I often don't....but promise to try harder when creating recipes for this blog!!)

Vegetable patties:
Quantities of washed, peeled and grated carrot and potato (I used a food processor for this, because anything else would have been insane. What I mixed up made 16 or so burgers, so based on the density and what I made from the meat ones,I reckon I had about a kilo of ingredients by the end).
finely chopped green beans,
sweetcorn
finely chopped red pepper
2 eggs
GF plain flour mix (I was out of breadcrumbs by this stage in the day!!)

IMPORTANT: You need to squeeze liquid out of the potatoes and carrots when you have grated them. As much as you are able. I did this with an old tea towel or two. Messy, but a fun job!! :D

When this is done, put all the ingredients into a large bowl (or your mixer, whatever) and mix well. I am not sure how much flour I used, I just added until it looked like it would hang together.

I then pressed it into patties with my burger press and froze them raw.
Don't do this. I don't think it's ok though I couldn't say exactly why. I think it's something about raw potato. Cook them first and THEN freeze them or just use them fresh. They were weird to defrost too. I think they were ok once cooked but won't be repeating this part. Also, add seasoning!! I didn't, but it needs it. They didn't taste bad without (just a bit bland really) but I'm thinking it would be better with. These also did not barbecue. Too wet. I shallow fried them in olive oil instead. My tester one was delicious, so I WILL be making them again, just not freezing them raw. I will report back on the freezing of them cooked.

Today is my hubsters birthday, and on my way back from church I will be breaking my sabbath to get extra potatoes and a couple of extra bits. Jacket potatoes have become a great standby on this journey.