Burger & Chips

Lucy, my 9 year old step daughter, had an inspired idea the other week;
Gayle asked; “What shall we have for dinner on Saturday?  Fajitas? Make your own pizzas?”.  Lucy answered; “Can we make our own burgers?”.  Brilliant!

This is brilliant on several levels:

1. There is something very under rated about a good, home-made burger.
2. There is nothing quite like ‘proper’ home-made, hand cut, twice fried chips.
3. I am allowed to get my deep fat fryer out!

The kids are allowed to make the burgers themselves after I have prepped all of the ingredients.  To serve 6 we used 1Kg minced beef, 1 1/2 small onions and 3 slices of bread, crust removed.  First I put the bread, bit by bit into the food processor and make it into breadcrumbs which get I set aside.  Then the roughly chopped onions get added to the food processor and get blitzed into a mush.  I then add the breadcrumbs and onion to the mince with some salt and pepper and pass this to the kids to make into heart shapes, footballs and whatever else takes their fancy.  These are all separated by pieces of cling film to be chilled in the fridge for later.  The quantities used here made almost 2x as much as we needed so the excess burgers were frozen for another day, which is fine as long as the mince was bought fresh.

I had a few tomatoes from the garden that I needed to use up so I decided to make a tomato burger relish.  I’d never made one of these before but I knew it broadly consisted of onions, tomato, vinegar and sugar.  I did a bit of research on the internet and came up with the following; 
Finely chop 1\2 a small onions and add to a pan with roughly 8 chopped tomatoes, skins removed if you are feeling fussy!  Add a few slugs of cider vinegar (1\2 wine glass maybe), 1 tablespoon sugar, 1\2 teaspoon cumin seeds & 1\4 teaspoon ground all spice (use mixed spice if you don’t have all spice).  Season very well and bring to the boil.   While it is cooking add more sugar to taste.  Now, the total amount of sugar I used in this I do not know as I kept checking the taste and adding more until I was happy with the flavour so I suggest you do this too.  Reduce this down by about 1\2, and after about 15 minutes it will be finished.  Take off the heat and cool thoroughly.

Onto the chips.  As much as I would like to involve the kids in the whole process of the meal, sharp knives, boiling oil and children don’t mix, so I’ll do this one.  The choice of potato is important.  You need a good floury potato so you get nice crispy edges, the same sort as you would choose for roasties, such as Maris Piper or King Edward.  I cut the chips about 1 1/2cm thick, you can do them thinner but I am not that brave. I have to rant now.  I hate this idea that a lot of restaurants have that the chips need to be about an inch thick and stacked in a neat pile that you could play potato Jenga with.  What a load of shite!  Proper chips are not like that, stop being so pretentious!………  And relax…….  Once the chips are cut put them in a big bowl of water for 30 minutes or so until your are ready for them. 

When you are ready dry the chips with a clean tea towel (very important!) and heat the oil in the deep fat fryer to its lowest temperature.  Basically, you want the chips to just bubble slowly and not ‘fry’ so you are cooking the potato without browning.   My deep fat fryer is actually too hot even on the lowest setting so I have to keep turning it off and on to keep the temperature right; its a labour of love.  Fry the chips for the first time in batches giving them about 5-6 minutes per batch.  Just long enough to ensure you get nice roughed up edges on your chips which go nice and crunchy in the final stage, but be careful not to over do it though!  Lay your par cooked chips out on a baking tray or something until you are ready to finish them off. 

With all of the chips par cooked, heat the oil to its highest temperature.  Again, fry the chips in batches, this time long enough for them to go golden brown, crispy and bloody lovely.  Shake the basket from time to time to stop them sticking together and to aid the ‘roughing up’ process.  Place each batch into a pre heated oven on some kitchen roll to keep warm and then cook your burgers to your liking using a griddle pad or barbecue.

Once you have given your burgers a few minutes to rest after cooking, serve your home-made ‘proper’ chips next to the burger on a bun with some cheese ( I can thoroughly recommend Port Salut with a burger!), gherkins and the tomato relish.  Superb!
Enjoy…