Our Lamb Burgers with rosemary and roasted garlic are a household favourite on the homemade ciabatta rolls.

You may have guessed by now Regan likes using the mincer (carefully and fully supervised, of course), so whilst you could just buy Lamb mince, we like to make the burgers with Lamb neck fillets, but any Lamb with a little (not too much) fat works well.

Ingredients: 500g of Lamb (minced); 2-3 cloves of Garlic (roasted); 2-3 stems off a Rosemary Bush; Salt and Pepper; 1 small egg (to bind).

Method: Before I go in to the main method of making these burgers, let me just say about the roasted garlic. You can roast just 2-3 cloves of garlic but we prefer to do a whole bulb and use the remaining cloves we’ve roasted to make our garlic butter. Having garlic butter in the fridge for Garlic Bread, or maybe chicken kiev type mid-week tea is always handy.

Anyway, back to the method. We mince the lamb using our mincer, in to a bowl and squeeze 2-3 of the roasted garlic cloves on to the lamb. Chop the rosemary and add to the bowl, add the salt and pepper (to taste). Regan then gets her hand in to the mixture ensuring the rosemary, garlic and lamb are well mixed. We then add the egg, mix together again, cover the bowl with clingfilm and put in the fridge whilst we make the ciabatta rolls. To make the burgers, we shape the lamb in to balls, equally to get 6 Lamb Burgers and use the burger press . Because the Ciabatta rolls are square, well sometimes they are square,  you could shape the burgers in to squares if you wanted and square burger presses are available for those who wish to do this.

The Ciabatta rolls work well with the lamb burgers, but you could make soft rolls, the brioche buns or even flatbread if you prefer.

Ingredients: 500g strong white bread flour; 10g salt; 10g dried yeast; 400ml of (lukewarm) water; 40ml of olive oil; cornmeal and flour for dusting.

Method: Making Ciabatta is a little different to our normal bread method, and the dough is a lot wetter, so using a stand mixer works best. We handle this dough much less than our normal bread, in fact we handle it hardly at all, it is STICKY.

We follow the same steps as our usual dough, add the flour and salt to the mixing bowl and mix the yeast with the water. Start the mixer on slow speed and add the olive oil to the flour and salt and then slowly add the water and yeast mix. Let the mixer knead the dough for another 10 mins.

Rather than our usual greased bowl for the proofing of the dough we put the dough to rise in a greased square or rectangle container about 3-litre in size. We leave the dough covered with a clean, damp tea towel for longer than normal, around 2 hours. we are looking for at least double, even treble the size on this proof.

Dust the work surface with a mix of flour and cornmeal (50/50) and carefully tip the dough out on to the dusted surface. The dough will still be wet so we are handling it much less and we want to keep the air in the dough not knock it back as per usual. Dust the top of the dough with the cornmeal and divide the dough with a sharp knife in to squares equally.

Place the ciabatta squares on a greased and dusted baking tray, and redust the top with the cornmeal and flour mix. Leave to rest for 10-15 mins and then bake in a HOT oven at 220C for around 20 mins or until golden brown. If you tap the bottom of the buns they’ll sound hollow if done. Cool on a wire rack. Don’t be too worried on shape of the ciabatta buns, especially if baking with a 5 year old, the important thing is the taste.

We serve the burgers with either Lisa’s (the wife) homemade tzatziki or our tomato relish with shavings of feta cheese.

Usual Notes: All done in a simple domestic kitchen and any equipment used is purely through personal choice and not any endorsement.