Five-a-Side Burgers: Foodie Underdog Recipe #3

Put on your shades, foodie underdogs. Dinner time is about to get a whole lot brighter.
Burgers are super easy to make, quick to cook, and the home made ones can even be a model of nutritiousness. What more could we ask for? Popularity? You got it. This is one meal that keeps everyone happy -- the meat eaters and the vegetarians alike.

Five-a-Side burgers are named for their simple cooking: all the bits cut to the same size, and grilled on a hot barbeque five minutes each side, so they're perfectly cooked and ready at the same time. Stack the cooked meat and/or veges up in a bun with a slice of tomato and avocado (or cucumber or anything you like), and serve with a simple green salad. You get your protein, your starch, your veges and your greens. Eat with your hands for the ultimate in casual dining.

I would never willingly eat a burger from a fast food place, but I make them at home pretty much every week. Sometimes they're meat burgers, sometimes salmon burgers, sometimes vege burgers. But they're always amazingburgers.

I do all the burger cooking on the barbeque. Why? Because it's a high-heat job, and I don't want smoke setting off the smoke alarms, and cooking smells lurking in the house. If a recipe calls for high heat, I say "take it outside." But if you don't have a barbie, or you can't use yours because it's currently buried in snow, you can use a frypan, a Foreman grill, or your toaster oven to do the cooking instead.

FIVE-A-SIDE BURGERS
Makes burgers for 4
Start about 30 minutes before you want to eat.

Ingredients
Start with the basics

• A big fat red onion
• A big fat tomato
• A ripe avocado is nice, but not essential
• Buns -- one per person is probably enough, but if you've got some big eaters in the house, get them a couple. 

Then add the extras

• Minced beef for the carnivores
• Salmon for the fish lovers
• Mushrooms and other veges for the vegetarians

Add ground beef for beef burgers.

Add salmon for salmon burgers. Small tail ends are perfect.

Add big mushrooms, slices of eggplant... or whatever other veges you like for vege burgers

And for seasoning

• olive oil
• salt  -- the nice flaky stuff
• pepper -- whole peppercorns in a pepper grinder

You can get away with simple ingredients and cooking methods if you use good seasonings. If you're not sure about what oil, salt and pepper you need, check the Foodie Underdogs Essentials list.

Kitchen equipment

• a knife and chopping board
• tongs
• foil
• a barbeque, smoking hot
• a timer

HOW TO

Turn your barbie onto to high, and let it get smoking hot while you prepare the food. (Whatever you're using for cooking, you want it pretty hot.)

Prepare the veges for grilling
Cut the veges you're going to cook into thick slices -- about half an inch thick. (That's roughly 1.5 cm.) You don't need to cut mushrooms.

Brush or rub the veges with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. I have this nifty silicone brush that I use all the time. I'd get one if I were you. But if you don't have one, just pour some olive oil into your hands and rub it on both sides of the vege slices and mushrooms.

Stack the oiled, seasoned veges in a dish, and eave them aside while you...

Slice up your tomato and avocado, and buns

Buns in half, tomato and avocado in thick slices like the other veges.
Try different kinds of buns. These are sourdough (thick and chewy), ciabatta (puffy and chewy), and parmesan (light and fluffy). If you're a gluten free zone, get gluten free. Want more fibre, get wholemeal. It's your bun.

Prepare the meat and/or salmon
Use good quality lean beef mince for your burger. It needs to have a bit of fat, but not too much. Someone's going to complain about paying $14 a kilo for mince. You only need half a kilo for four burgers. That's $1.75 per burger. You're worth it.

Divide the mince evenly into four, and shape into rough patties. Use your fingers to make dints in the patties. You want the meat nice and loose, not all rammed into a hard lump. This just helps it cook properly and get nice brown bits on the outside.

Brush with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. That's it.

But every other burger recipe you've seen tells you to add breadcrumbs and eggs and milk and tomato sauce, and herbs and dog-knows what else! I know. Just try this simple burger. I predict it will convert you.

Salmon burgers?

Rub or brush with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. (Noticing a trend here? It's the foodie underdog way!)

You don't need to take the skin off the bottom. It holds the salmon together while it's cooking, and it's fine to eat too.

Time to cook
Your barbeque will now be hot enough. Leave it on high while you cook.

Put all your seasoned veges and meat on the barbie.  (If you've got room, do it all in one shift. If not, you can do it in a couple of shifts.)

Set your timer for 5 minutes.

DO NOT TOUCH the food on the barbeque! Seriously. Just leave it alone to cook for 5 minutes. That way you'll get nice even cooking, gorgeous grill marks, and your meat patties won't fall apart.
When the timer goes off, use your tongs to turn everything over. 

Look at all those lovely grill marks! You wouldn' thave those if you poked and prodded and flipped and squished.

Set the timer again, and DO NOT TOUCH anything on the barbeque. When the timer goes off the second time, everything will be done.

Cook salmon exactly the same way as the patties. Oil, salt, pepper, five-a-side, Do Not Touch while cooking.

Wrap in foil, and take inside. 

Before you turn the barbie off, pop the buns on to warm them through.

Just half a minute a side. 

Happy barbeque tip: Clean it before you turn it off. So much easier. Just give it a quick scrub with a wire brush, shut the lid, and turn it off. Next time you use the barbie, it will be clean.

Build the burgers
Let everyone build their own burger. My sister Julie thought 'five-a-side' burgers had five toppings on each side of the bun! Nice idea. But two or three will be quite enough!

Avocado, beef, onion, mushroom and tomato on Parmesan bun for Mike.

Avocado, tomato, onion and salmon on ciabatta for me.

Avocado, beef, onion and eggplant on Parmesan bun for dc.

Smear your bun with mustard or chutney if you like, but you don't really need to. Everything will be juicy and tasty.

Serve with a green salad (from a bag is totally fine).

Can we make this recipe better?
If you try this recipe, and have any trouble or think you can make it easier, please let me know. Leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

What's Foodie Underdogs about?
Foodie underdogs are people who've never learned to cook, or don't like cooking, but have to feed themselves or other people.

Mealtimes are an ongoing pain in the ass for foodie underdogs. So I've decided to rescue them from their mealtime hell, with totally basic, doable meals, that require an absolute minimum of ingredients, hardly any kitchen equipment, and the least amount of kitchen time possible.

Read about the Foodie Underdogs project