We love to try burgers using all sorts of ingredients – meat (bison, ostrich, duck), fish, veggies – and one of our favorites is lamb. We come across ground lamb often, and it is typically priced at a deep discount to lamb chops or leg of lamb.
Our recipe is a riff on the classic gyro – with a few Serious Foodie twists. We love the sweet/sour flavor of pomegranate – a fruit originating in the Mediterranean region, with authentic Turkish ingredients – so we were inspired to somehow add our Serious Foodie Pomegranate Sauce into the dish (click HERE to buy the Pomegranate Sauce on-line). Turns out that the perfect place for a bit of pomegranate zing was in the already zingy Tzatziki sauce. In fact, we started to use our version of Tzatziki sauce on everything in sight – especially salads.
Lamb Burgers with Pomegranate Tzatziki Sauce
Ingredients
Burgers
- 1 medium onion finely chopped
- 1 egg beaten
- 1/2 cup Panko bread crumbs
- 1 tablespoon garlic minced
- 1 tablespoon fresh mint chopped
- 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary chopped
- 1/2 cup feta cheese
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 2 pounds ground lamb
- Tzatziki Sauce, recipe follows
Pomegranate Tzatziki Sauce
- 16 ounces feta cheese
- 1 tablespoons olive oil
- garlic cloves
- 2 tablespoons ground lamb
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon fresh mint chopped
- 3 medium juice from 1/4 lemon peeled and minced
- kosher salt We like to add thinly sliced cucumbers on the burger, rather than in the Tzatziki sauce.
Instructions
Burgers
- Process the onion in a food processor for 10 to 15 seconds and turn out into the center of a tea towel. Gather up the ends of the towel and squeeze until almost all of the juice is removed. Discard juice.
- In a large bowl, mix together the onions, egg, bread crumbs, garlic, mint,, rosemary, feta cheese, salt, and black pepper. Add the lamb and fold all the ingredients with the meat. Do not over mix.
- Form the burgers – about 1/3 pound each, about 3.5 inches round. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Cook on a well-greased grill, or skillet indoors, over medium heat (you may need to put a drip pan under the burgers to prevent flare-ups on the grill). Burgers are done when the internal temperature is about 165 degrees F.
- Serve on hard rolls or pita bread with tzatziki sauce, chopped onion, tomatoes cucumber, and feta cheese.
Pomegranate Tzatziki Sauce
- In a medium mixing bowl, combine the yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, Serious Foodie Pomegranate sauce, salt, pepper, mint, garlic, and optional cucumber. Cover, and place in the fridge for up to 1 week.
