What do you do when you are craving for a burger really badly? I like to make my own burgers, with the ingredients I like and with the styling I want. This time I made a sweet potato “bun” burger. Every time I make a burger I try to make it without a bun. If you think about it, you don’t really need a bun. It just makes you feel full too quick. You can simply substitute it with something else. You can use mushrooms, potatoes or any other veggies.
I put sweet potato as a base and I used prosciutto, onion and tomato as toppings. Talking about the meat; I didn’t want the patty to be just a normal one, so I added also some coriander for the freshness and chili for the spiciness. The flavours go perfectly together. It is so good and tasty that you will ask for more.
Try to make this burger at home and invite your friends too. You can also change some toppings or add other ingredients to the meat. That is a great advantage by doing the burgers in your own kitchen. Another plus by eating burgers at home is that you can get messy and don’t care much about it because nobody will see you. Pure enjoyment!
Ingredients for 4 burgers:
- 1 sweet potato
- 5 handfuls of lamb’s lettuce (known also as corn salad or valerianella)
- 1 red and 1 white onion
- 3 slices of prosciutto or bacon
- 3 garlic cloves
- 2 small tomatoes
- 1 spring onion
- 400 g minced beef
- 1 chili
- a handful of coriander
- olive oil
- salt and pepper
How to make it?
Start with the easiest part. Wash the salad and leave it in a small bowl on a side. Peel the potato and “julienne” it. This means cut it into long thin strips; matchstick lookalike. I par-cooked (half cooked) the strips before making four small potato hash browns. It will take only a couple of minutes because the sweet potato cooks really quick. How to do a hash brown? Take a small pan, drizzle some oil and make four piles of potatoe-strips. I just simply shaped them in a round and a little bit thicker shape using my fingers. Pan-fry for a couple of minutes on both sides. When done, remove to a plate.
Use the same pan for the prosciutto slices. Leave them on a medium heat, until they get crispy. Remove on a paper towel.
Take another bowl and combine the beef with chopped garlic and red onion, chopped coriander and chili. Season with some salt and pepper and mix well, using your hand. Some people will say that you should use also an egg, as a glue, to keep everything together. I didn’t use it and it still came out perfect. Shape the meat in four patties and place them on a baking paper (like that they don’t stick on a cutting board). Heat a little oil in a pan, add the patties and pan-fry them for 3-4 minutes on each side.
Clean the white onion and slice to get onion rings. I added them to the same pan with the burger patties. Brown them for a couple of minutes, until they get some colour and soften. The last thing to do is cut the tomatoes in slices, chop the spring onion and you are ready to “build” your burger.
Divide the salad between four plates. Place the potato hash brown in the middle, followed by the prosciutto slice and the amazing chili burger patty. The tomato slice and the onion go on very top. At the end add the spring onion. Now, you are more than welcome to bite into the burger.
Enjoy!
