Why you should cook this
The Aussie burger is the only burger format that openly admits to being a structural disaster. Beef pattie, melted tasty cheese, fried egg, slice of tinned beetroot, lettuce, tomato, raw onion, and BBQ sauce, all stacked into a sesame-seed milk-bar bun that has no business holding any of it. The first bite is a negotiation. The second bite is acceptance. The third is the egg yolk, the beetroot juice and the BBQ sauce running down your wrist while you make excited noises through a mouthful you cannot speak around.
The beetroot is non-negotiable. Tinned, sliced, the cheap supermarket kind that comes in pink water. Fresh-roasted beetroot is correct in salads and wrong in this burger. Use a beef mince with 20% fat (chuck mince, the butcher will know what you mean), salt the patty hard right before it hits the pan, and finish the egg sunny-side-up so the yolk runs the way nature intended. Toast the buns in the same pan as the patty. Eat with both hands, accept the consequences.
What to drink with it
A cold VB or Cooper’s Pale, our Long Island Iced Tea, or a chocolate thickshake.
Notes from the kitchen
Tinned beetroot only. Yes really. Fresh roasted beetroot is wrong here. The egg yolk should be runny. It mixes with the beetroot juice and the BBQ sauce as you bite.
The recipe
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Ingredients
Method
- Form mince into 4 patties about 1.5cm thick. Salt and pepper both sides.
- Heat a large heavy pan over high. Add patties. Cook 3 minutes per side. Top each with a slice of cheese in the last minute.
- In another pan, fry the eggs and onion rings until eggs are still soft-yolked, onion is golden.
- Butter and toast the buns in the burger pan.
- Build: bottom bun, BBQ sauce, lettuce, tomato slice, beetroot slice, beef-with-cheese, fried egg, fried onion, BBQ sauce or tomato, top bun.
- Press down. Eat with both hands and a serviette.
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Pattie falls apart
You overworked the mince. Mix briefly, form gently. Don’t compress too hard.
Rubbery egg
Egg cooked too long. Pull it the second the white is set; the yolk should still be runny.
Variations worth knowing
With pineapple
Add a grilled slice of pineapple. The Hawaiian-Aussie-pub-classic.
Lamb and mint
Replace beef mince with lamb. Add a teaspoon of dried mint to the pattie.
Vegetarian
Replace beef with a black bean and quinoa pattie. Keep everything else.
Leftovers and make ahead
Eat fresh. Pre-cook patties up to a day ahead and reheat briefly. The build-and-eat is part of the dish.