Cooking Lamb Burgers with Chef Taueret Thomas - LTI - Columbia, MD
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 Hi, I'm Chef Tarrette Thomas, Culinary Director for Lincoln Culinary Institute in Columbia,
00:07 Maryland. And we're here today to show you how to kickstart your grilling off for your
00:18 Fourth of July celebration. I have a wonderful recipe for you and it's one of my favorites.
00:24 I love to grill, so I'm going to show you how to prepare fresh lamb burgers. I love
00:31 lamb. So, we have some ingredients that are common to the lamb and we're starting off
00:39 with some wonderful lean ground lamb, high in protein, a good source of iron, and just
00:48 overall I love to make lamb burgers on the grill. Of course, we're going to have some
00:55 fresh herbs. If you're trying to really make your grilling stand out, you need to use fresh
01:02 herbs. So, I have some chiffonade of mint, a real fancy term for meaning that I'm rolling
01:10 up the mint leaves and I'm going to slice them across. So, a chiffonade of mint, I have
01:17 some dill here, just pick them off of the stem, some red pepper flakes, ground oregano,
01:24 some minced garlic, some ground cumin, some granulated garlic, and finally some lemon
01:42 juice. Easy, easy recipe. Again, you can get your ground lamb from your favorite grocer.
01:49 You know, really, really just good tasty meat. So, we're going to season with some kosher
01:58 salt of course. This is what we always use in our culinary school. Some fresh ground
02:08 black pepper, and I started off with probably about just a pound of ground meat. Next, some
02:15 granulated garlic, a wonderful staple. I'm going to put some of my mint in, some ground
02:33 cumin, and of course we'll have this exact recipe for you to follow. I'm doing maybe
02:40 about a tablespoon or so of the ground cumin. I'm going to do about two teaspoons of the
02:54 ground oregano. Garlic, fresh garlic, always boil it down. I'm going to put a little bit
03:02 of salt. Always wonderful minced garlic. And then, lastly, ground lamb needs a little bit
03:09 of acid, so we're using some lemon juice here. And then just a splash or so of extra virgin
03:27 olive oil. Now, get your hands into the meat. Don't be afraid. Of course, your hands are
03:34 clean. And we're just going to make sure that all of our herbs and spices are mixed in.
03:43 And then I'm going to follow that up, lastly, with the dill. And then we're going to make
03:53 our patties. You always want to make a tester, so you might want to, if you are not really
04:00 sure about the seasonings, you might want to just make a small tester, a little mini
04:12 burger so to speak, so you make sure before you cook all of your meat that it is pretty
04:19 tasty. Again, lamb doesn't have a lot of fat in it, so it's really good for you. A lot
04:26 less fat than beef, of course. And so, we make our patties. And you want to make sure
04:44 that you're just forming them loosely. And look, you can make them as sliders, you can
04:51 make them as large as your rolls are, and you'll be ready to go right to the grill.
04:59 Easy as one, two, three. Now my patties are complete. I've done my tester, the seasoning
05:06 is perfect, and so now we're ready for the grill. But one thing I do want to share with
05:11 you, when you're going to be grilling, just like your grill in a commercial kitchen, we
05:17 need to make sure that we care for it, and that it's always primed and ready to go for
05:22 our foods. So here we have our wonderful brush that we make sure that all of the debris is
05:29 off of the grill surface. Of course, you have one like this for your grill, probably a little
05:39 bit smaller though. And so we are ready to go. The patties, again, have been seasoned.
05:46 Your lamb burgers, again, have dill, mint, granulated garlic, red pepper flakes, fresh
05:59 garlic, ground oregano, and some lemon juice and olive oil. So all we're going to do, you
06:09 want to test the surface of your grill. I want to get a nice hot spot, and we just lay
06:16 them on. Important to note, once you put your burgers on, leave them there. Do not move
06:23 them until they're ready to be turned, especially if you're trying to get your wonderful grill
06:30 marks. And so, we're going to put our patties on. And I'm going to put my grill on. I'm
06:37 going to put my grill on. And so, our burgers, we're going to cook for about maybe two minutes
06:44 or so on each side. If your flame is too high, you can regulate that with a little bit of
06:54 water. This is, of course, a gas grill. You might be using charcoal. I love charcoal too,
07:01 so I can make some adjustments though on a gas grill by turning our knobs. You want to
07:08 make sure that you're not having so much flame coming up. But again, because lamb burgers
07:13 have a little bit less fat, you shouldn't have too much flaming. Wonderful. Our lamb
07:20 burgers are looking great. Now I want to show you how to get those professional cross hatch
07:28 marks on your burger. Again, once you put the burgers down on the grill, we're letting
07:34 them just cook for a bit. They're going to release from the grill rather easily. We take
07:41 our spatula and we give a quarter turn so that we make sure that our cross hatch marks
07:48 are coming across. Nice flame. Again, a little hot. And then we're going to flip them over
07:57. Let me get the one in the back. I love just the freshness of the lamb. Now, I like
08:26 my lamb medium rare. That goes with, or medium with lamb chops as well. So a good medium
08:33 temperature is going to be probably around 140 to 150 degrees Fahrenheit. We're going
08:54 to turn this down just a bit. Again, if your flame flares up and you're on your grill,
09:01 you can always move it to a less hot spot on your grill. No need to panic. It's all
09:10 the wonderful juices. Another important fact to remember, you never want to press your
09:20 burgers. I don't care if that's beef, chicken, lamb. You want those natural juices to be
09:26 in that burger when you bite into it, right? So you don't want to press it down with a
09:31 spatula. All we're doing is giving them a nice flip over. Okay, our lamb burgers are
09:37 cooked. We again, cooked them about two to three minutes on each side. These might be
09:44 what we call a little bit mini burgers, but don't worry. They taste just as good as a
09:51 larger burger. I'm going to prepare the fixings. So I have some wonderful arugula, fresh arugula.
09:59 The arugula is going to give a nice offset to the sweetness that you're going to have
10:11 with the burger because I have garlic in there. It's real savory. Arugula is a little bitter.
10:18 So with everything, I come from the school of thought that you should season everything.
10:26 So we just, again, just a little bit of kosher salt, a little bit of fresh ground pepper,
10:36 just a little bit of our olive oil here. And we're going to give this a toss. I'm going
10:43 to place this right on top of the burger. And of course, lamb is wonderful too. And
10:50 I don't know if you have one of these. This is called a microplane, a fancy zester, so
11:01 to speak. Again, as I said, citrus goes well with lamb. So we're just going to give a nice
11:08 little shaving of some lemon zest to give our burger some zing. Take your fingers, scrape
11:15 down. If you don't have one of these handy tools, you need to get one. I love it. You
11:26 can use it for chocolate. You can use it for any type of citrus for sure. And so we have
11:33 toasted a wonderful roll. We make these here in the school in our baking and pastry class,
11:43 but you can have any wonderful roll. It could be a potato roll or a traditional hamburger
11:53 roll. And I'm just going to pick up and you know what I'm going to do since they're so
11:59 tasty, I'm going to put two on to make it really, really zing. And I have some feta
12:06 cheese. Feta goes great with lamb. So I'm just going to take just a little bit. Don't
12:16 worry about the spillage that makes the plate presentation so much better. I did grill some
12:23 onions ahead of time. Again, a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Put this on
12:33 the grill. Wonderful accompaniment. Now we're going to put our topping. And you know, I
12:45 don't have anybody complaining about they didn't get enough to eat this Fourth of July
12:52 because this is just a wonderful burger. Look how wonderful this looks. And then how about
12:59 a nice accompaniment of some grilled tomatoes. Real easy again, a little bit of salt and
13:13 pepper, a little bit of olive oil. Place them on your grill. You can't go wrong. Now we
13:20 have our wonderful lamb burger. I hope you enjoy. I'm ready to eat. Enjoy your Fourth
13:28 of July.
13:32 [Music]