Once trimmed you should have 600g to 1kg (about 1.5 to 2 lbs) of lean cubes to be minced.
Hard fat from inside ribs 100g to 200g (about 0.5 lbs)
Worcestershire sauce
Black Pepper freshly ground.
1 medium onion grated and dried with kitchen paper.
Alternate ingredients for Ram burgers with Sun dried tomatoes: Brie Sun dried tomatoes in olive oil Basil leaves
Cooking ingredients : Salt & Pepper Oil from the Sun dried tomatoes
Finishing Ingredients:
Burger buns
Giant pickles (Some call them Gerkins)
Tomatoes
Relish various
Mustard (A good whole grain goes well with this dish)
Preparation time: 30 mins
Marinade time: 1hr to 1 week
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At this age the meat will have lots of flavour.
(Other good options are Shetland cross's i.e. with Beltex, Texel or my personal favourite Polwarth.)
Try to have the meat hung for at least 7 days, 14 if you have a nice understanding butcher or abattoir.
As you will notice from the picture, Shetland meat is very low in fat and is quite dark by comparison to the lamb you see in the supermarket.
This is good for your health but for this recipe you will need to add some fat. This will help the taste and the cooking. I usually cook my burgers over charcoal so a lot of the fat comes out of the burger during the cooking.
Take the leg and cut the meat off the bone into large chunks. You will notice from the leg picture 2 there is a section of meat near the bottom of the leg which has lots of stringy bits in it. Try and remove all of this and feed it to your cat or dog. They usually appear as soon as I start preparing meat. You will also need to remove all the skin and any sinews you find on the chunks of leg meat. Be ruthless in the preparation, a few grams less meat in the burgers will not matter.
Once done you will end up with very lean chunks of meat which should now be cut up into rough 2cm cubes. Cut the hard fat into similar size cubes.
To give you a rough idea of quantities, I started with a 1.75Kg (3.5 lbs) leg from a 2 shear Ram After removing the bone and preparing the meat I was left with 700g (1.25lbs) of lean cubes and several fat cats! I added just under 170g (0.5 lbs) of fat. (Weights are very aproximate do not get too worried about being exact.)
Place the meat and fat in a bowl. Splash 2 to 4 good slugs of Worcestershire sauce over the meat, add some of the fresh ground pepper. Get your hand in and mix the meat and fat until well covered with the sauce.
Cover and place in a fridge for a minimum of 1hr.(At this stage the meat can be left for up to a week in the fridge.)
The next stage is to prepare to make the burgers. Grate the onion using a coarse cheese grater.
(You always end up with about 1/4 of the onion left this is OK, don't grate your fingers.) Use kitchen roll or a clean piece of muslin to wring out excess liquid from the grated onion. The drier the better.
Now mince the meat and fat in your mincer, use a fine option if you have one.
(If you do not have a mincer you can use a food processor. Split the meat mix into 3 or 4 and pulse each till you have a fine mince. Place them all back in the bowl once minced). There is no need to keep any of the marinade. Mix the onion and mince together, use your hands its the only way to get the mix right.
You should now have a well mixed bowl of mince. At this stage can make standard burgers by just skipping this next section and going straight to forming 4 to 6 burgers from the mixture.
Take the mince and divide into 8 equal balls.
Place on a large chopping board or clean surface and flatten into discs, they should be thin but still hold their shape if picked up. See picture of burger discs.
On another board cut 4 chunks of Brie, 2cm long 1cm thick.
You can leave the rind on if you want.
Chop some of the oil soaked sun dried tomatoes.
Pick 8 good size basil leaves.
Then place some chopped sun dried tomatoes on the basil leaf, place a chunk of Brie on top and then another basil leaf. All the ingredients should be in the centre of the disc and not overlap the edge.
Take another burger disc and place it on top of the pile in you other hand.
Work round the edge of the stack squashing the edges together, then press the burger between your hands to make sure it reforms back to a fat burger shape.
If you find thing falls apart, separate the ingredients and remake the discs to start again.
(You can always make one less burger and add the extra meat to the other discs. This is one of those dishes I always make more than I need, extra burgers always get eaten. Bigger burgers are also easier to make.)
Repeat the process until all four burgers are made.
If you are just making burgers with out the filling, form 4 to 6 burgers from the same mix.
These can be kept in the fridge for a few hours but once made should be cooked the same day if you have made them with the Brie option.
30 to 45 minutes.
First season the burgers both sides with salt and pepper just as they go onto the heat. These burgers do not cook quickly so do not try. Remember this is RAM meat. I normally cook these on a BBQ at a medium sort of temperature for around 45 mins moving them out of the flames as the fat renders out of the burger.
You can cook these under a medium to hot grill and the cooking time may be slightly shorter depending on the size of the burger. Basically this is one recipe where you will need to try it and see what works best for you.
Build the burger on the fresh buns (toasted or not) place a few slices of fresh tomato, a slice of giant pickle and a basil leaf or two. Serve with a mustard, relish and some more giant pickles.
Variations include adding a few more slices of Brie to the top of the burger in the last 5 to 10 minutes of cooking or using other soft cheese instead of Brie.
Enjoy it!