Seb and Valentinas BBQ

Hmm. BBQs are my forte. I’m really good at charing meat on a grill. Actually, and this is being a bit stuck up, but I am genuinely good at barbies, so when my best mate Seb came down to see us and wanted one then I was in my element. However Valentina is a veggie. So that’s why this started with a ‘Hmm’.

K, lets start with the meat eaters BBQ grub

My Mums Burgers

These bugers were taught to me by my Mum. She says that she got them from the Australian Woman’s Weekly, but what’s really nice is that you can much about with the recipe so much to your own favorite flavours. The key in these sausages is that there is no mucking about with egg or breadcrumbs, you use sausage meat to bind them together.

Recipe

For 4 burgers

• 300g Beef Mince
• 3 good sausages (pick a real sausage like Cumberland, Linconshire or something. You want a sausage with herbs and flavour in it.)
• 1 garlic clove (or a good teaspoon of the pre chopped stuff)
• 2 teaspoons of wholegrain mustard
• 1 Red Onion finely chopped

Chop the onion finely and then pop it in the microwave. Give it 3 minutes radar love. (That was with a 750w oven) The onions want to be soft but not falling apart – so if it needs a bit longer then give it another 30 secs. I find it easiest to nuke the onions in a bowl large enough to do the mixing too – in my case it’s a large mixing bowl.

Once the onions are sorted then put the mince, garlic ad mustard in. Take the skin off the sausages (just run a knife down then and chuck the skin away) and put the sausage meat into the bowl. Now for the fun bit – mix all of the ingredients together. That sounds quite gentle, don’t be. Beat the crap out of the mixture, you want to really mix this together.

Finally shape into 4 simialr sized balls and then flatten into a burger. They can be around 1-2 cm tall, so you are looking for flatened meatballs rather than perfect patties.

Cooking

OK I’m going to do a different post on getting a BBQ ready to cook, but I’m going to assume it’s at temperatue (red coals, no flame) basically really quite ‘king hot.

Pop the burgers on and then – DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH THEM UNTIL THEY HAVE SEALED. DON’T EVEN TRY. YOU PICK THEM UP AND THEY WILL FALL APART. Seriously. I normally leave them for around 5 – 10 mins and then I turn them over. You want them to be a bit charred before turning over. The point is with these burgers is flavour – you don’t want to have a rare burger with this recipe as it’s pork and beef mixed up.

Another 5 – 10 mins and you’re done.

So that’s the burgers – with them we cooked the sausages we didn’t use in the burgers and some fantastic ribs from the butchers pre marinated in BBQ sauce. Lovely.

But what does Valentina eat? Well fortunately she told me. And you know what – I thought she was either crazy or trying to be undificult house guest. We popped to the supermarket and she bought courgettes and aubergine and told me to just grill those

I felt awful – Valentina was only going to get charred vegatables. That was really not what I like to do when people come round, I want everyone to have a good time, good music and good food and Valentina was only getting a token meal.

Recipie

• Some sort of vegetable, sliced

Cooking

Pour olive oil on the vegetable. Grill it on a hot grill. (To add insult to injury the barbie wasn’t hot enough and I had to use a griddle pan).

How boring it that? We had aubergine and corgettes. Seriously dull. Sorry NO! Brilliant. Simply grill the veg, make sure it chars a bit and they are fantastic.

So from now on I’m going to definately still do my burgers (ok my Mum’s burgers) and I’m going to also grill some aubergine slices on the side!