Matthew Walton’s Blog

Usually I make beef burgers, but I fancied a change, and this worked out so well with a bit of experimentation and some inspiration from various recipes online that I thought I’d post it. There’s probably an identical recipe somewhere else – I can’t be the only person who’s come up with this. Ah well.

• about one pound of minced pork
• a third of a Bramley apple
• one small onion
• freshly ground black pepper
• Worcestershire sauce
• some buns in which to place the burgers for eating

First things first: peel and chop the onion into small pieces, then fry it in olive oil until soft. When it’s nearly ready, peel the third of the apple and grate it through a coarse grater into the onion pan. Stir this all in and cook gently on a low heat.

At this point you probably want to do something with the rest of the apple before it goes brown. I made pudding with mine.

Once the apple’s cooked a little and the whole onion/apple mixture is nice and soft, stir in a generous couple of dashes of Worcestershire sauce and a tasteful grind of black pepper. Dump this in a bowl with the pork mince and mix it all together well. Divide into four equal parts and form into balls.

Heat a heavy-based frying pan until it’s really hot, then add a little ground nut or vegetable oil. Tip the pan to coat all over with oil, then pop two burger balls in and smash them flat with a suitably-shaped implement (say… a fish slice, although if it’s got holes or slits in it, careful as the mixture will want to ooze through them and get stuck). There will be lots of sizzling and steam and some smoke, and you might want to be careful of the smoke alarm at this point. Mine usually goes off when I do burgers. Fortunately I don’t live in a big building with a proper fire alarm system…

After a minute or so, flip the burgers. Keep an eye on them, and flip again whenever seems necessary until they’re just cooked through. Put them on a plate and keep warm while you repeat the procedure with the other two burgers.

In case you’re wondering, yes this is how the infamous smash and scrape method of burger cookery works out for me. My frying pan is almost relentlessly nonstick, so there really isn’t much scraping going on, but I can cope with that. It won’t form a crust like beef burgers do, but that’s okay. Trust me.

Serve in buns, with plates because they’ll drip delicious juices.

This is really simple. I just finished eating a bowlful and it’s utterly gorgeous. I’m very vague on quantities.

Take about eight slices of streaky pork and cut into chunks. Chop a red onion and fry it in olive oil, then add two cloves of garlic, grated or crushed. Add six tomatoes cut into eighths, then the pork and stir well. Add herbs: perhaps sage and rosemary. A squirt of tomato pur̩e, a dash of concentrated chicken stock, some hot water and some pearl barley (I have no idea how much I added Рit just seemed like enough). Season with salt and pepper.

Simmer gently until the barley is soft and cooked through, then ladle into a bowl and enjoy with freshly baked bread, or by itself.

The rest will freeze nicely, or feed other people.

No picture; I’m too lazy today.