Home-made Lamb Burger

Burgers and fast foods not just for Drive-thru. That's what I realized after making my own lamb burger at home. And when you make at home you can be assured it is healthy and made with the freshest of ingredients with Olive Oil instead of the saturated vegetable oil used at Fast Food places. I followed the tips from Woman's Day magazine for making the burger patty. I just substituted the ground beef with ground lamb and a little bit more spice than what the meat called for, to satisfy my taste buds.

One 1/2 kg pack of ground lamb (I got mine from Publix) makes 4 burgers.

Ingredients (for patty):

• Ground lamb - 1/2 kg
• Garlic - 4 (minced)
• Green chillies - 3 to 4 (minced)
  
• Pepper - 1 tsp
• Salt - as required

To make the sandwich I used slightly toasted burger buns with mayonnaise spread, lettuce, tomato, red onion and cheese. But when it comes to burger, it is all about the patty. Method below:

Method:

Mix all the ingredients mentioned for patty together. Divide into 4 equal sized balls. Flatten the balls to a patty. The patty should be slightly wider than the buns (because they shrink in diameter when grilled). Do not make them too thin as the meat will dry out quickly and will loose its moisture. Heat the grill pan and once it is hot, coat it with Olive Oil. Place the patty on the grilling and drizzle with more Olive Oil on top. Leave alone on medium heat for 5 minutes on one side. Turn sides and cook the other side for 5 minutes as well (or till a instant read thermometer, inserted from the side to the center, registers 160 degrees. Yes, I bought one just for making these burgers.). Turn off the heat and let the meat rest for a few minutes before assembling the burger. Tip from years of watching Food Network: Do not press down the patty when it is cooking as it will squeeze out all the juice from the meat and make the patty hard and dry. Just leave it alone!

Spinach Soup

When you start eating healthy, it usually means you are becoming more responsible (which of course, means you are growing old! Ugh!) But when I find tasty ways of eating healthy, I do not regret it one bit. This Spinach Soup is one such totally cool recipe that I doesn't make me feel even one bit that I am eating healthy. Here is the recipe link: Spinach Soup. I followed the recipe as is and I loved the end product. One tip: make sure you completely grind the soup to a really smooth consistency without any left out pieces. If there are solids left behind, to me personally, it spoils the experience :). Also, judge for yourselves, if you want to add some raw spinach as the recipe suggests. It adds a really good color but if you feel that your spinach didn't look very clean or if it has stayed in your refrigerator for a couple of days then just don't risk eating raw spinach.

This soup also taught me one very valuable lesson, for which Karthik and I had to pay a very heavy price of completely cleaning the kitchen and all its exposed components. When using a Indian style mixer to grind something that contains a lot of liquids in it, either make sure you are strong enough to fight the mixer's urge to throw off the lid, or just don't do it. Instead use a blender (mixers do not come with blender and juicer attachments for no apparent reason). I, of course, learnt it the hard way, after my entire kitchen and myself included, got bathed in a mixture of hot chicken stock and milk :(. Amma's tip: When you grind a mixture of liquids and solid pieces like that, make sure you pour in the solids first and once they are ground, you can then add the liquids and mix it up.