Cooking for friends is always fun, and when The Debutante and wntrmute announced their combined birthday The Debutante and I went into conspiracy mode. Wntrmute's interesting eating habits seem to bring out the mother in the two of us and we feel the need to get vegetables into him in crazy ways without scaring the living daylights out of him.
He likes burgers, so I set to work creating the wntrmute sneaky burger! It is based on the beef burger recipe from my cooking bible and then given the mort treatment so the measurements are not exact!
Ingredients:
Method:
Chop the onion finely (or blitz in the food processor if you don't want lumps in your burgers). Place in a bowl and liberally apply Worcestershire sauce to colour the onion. Set aside.
Peel the carrots and top and tail, top and tail the zucchini and completely pulverize in a food processor. You could just grate them, but I was trying to hide the fact there was so much vegetable in the burgers.
Place the meat, vegetables and onion in a large bowl. Add a good squirt of tomato sauce, a dash of Worcestershire, a sprinkle of pepper and a decent shake of mixed dried herbs. Beat the egg and add it.
Now if you are squeamish you can use a spoon. I am fairly tactile, so I encourage you to put that hand into the bowl and squish the mix through your fingers! (This mix will make your hand turn slightly orange.) Now at this point you will find that the mix is very sticky, so start adding the bread crumbs. You keep adding the breadcrumbs until the texture is firm and very mildly sticky.
Once you have the correct consistency, make the mixture into burger type or rissoles shapes. Then coat them in plain flour.
You can cook them now but I recommend that you place them in the fridge for at least an hour before cooking, I left mine overnight.
Then cook them in a fry pan with a dash of oil, on the grill, the broiler, or even the BBQ! They should be firm enough after being in the fridge but less turning is better. Cook each side until brown, low heat for well done or medium heat for medium to rare.
Serve hot with your favourite sauce or even on a bun with all the trimmings.
This is a fairly plain recipe but you could add some garlic to the onion mix. Or even experiment with the different types of vegetable hiding for picky children or strange mathematicians! Add some Cajun spices like the Americans. Cover in breadcrumbs instead of plain flour or use fresh herbs. I also have made `surprise' burgers where I wrap a cube of cheese in the middle of the burger mixture. The sky is the limit and this recipe seem to be a little different to the normal American style hamburger.
Noded for CloudStrife who was in need of burger and had eaten these before. | 
