game burgers

Game-burgers!

Ingredients:

For the mince

1000g of red deer (diced haunch) (I use red deer because it has a stronger flavour than Roe or Fallow, it is also a lot cheaper )

500g wild boar (I only had some fillet left, but I would normally have used collar)

500g diced pork collar (this was to make up for lack of wild boar)

300g of goose livers

1 large onion diced and sautéed

1 large or 2 small cloves of garlic

Soft cranberries

Game spices (see my recipe)

Salt & Pepper


The marinade:

1 large glass of dry red wine

1 sherry glass of port (or Marsala)

2 crushed garlic cloves

Game spices

N.B. No quantities given as it depends on your taste, if you want a bit more umpf then up the chillies and pepper, a bit more savoury then more root veg. the choice is yours adjust until you find what you prefer, if you don’t like anything then leave it out, also please feel free to add anything that you wish, I will often add dried Ceps if using it for a casserole.

My game spices (see below) are all roughly crushed with 2 tea spoons of course sea salt with a pestle and mortar, and then transferred to my spice mill that I keep especially for my game spices.  (now all done in my coffee grinder)

Grind plenty of the spices over the meat and liver (at least a table spoonful, I used 2), put into a ziplok bag add the wine, port and garlic, close, give it a good massage, and put in the fridge for at least 24 hours.

Next day or better the day after ;-) remove all the meat from the bag and drain in a sieve. (If you are by any chance doing a game stew or goulash, the liquid makes a great start for the stock).

Mince it all through a 5mm plate, the liver will turn to mush but this is necessary as it will bind the burgers together as well as giving it a nice depth of taste.

Fry the onions and garlic until translucent (do not burn) add to the mince with the chopped cranberries. Now the part I like, get your (clean) hands in and give it a good mix.

I moulded mine into 10cm patties using a chefs ring. Put each one between foil and transferred to a cool box. Burger pictures tonight!

The buns for the burgers are from Dan Lepards site and are carrot, onion, cumin, paprika and are fantastic.

We had these for our cookery club summer BBQ 2009.