Asian-inspired beef burgers

Instructions

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1 Place lemongrass, garlic, chilli, mint and coriander in a blender and finely chop.

2 Place mince in a large bowl with the couscous, egg, lemon juice, salt and pepper and blended herb mix.

3 To make 4 even-sized burgers, wet hands and form the mince into balls, then flatten into burger shapes. Chill for 20 minutes (see tip).

4 Meanwhile, make the topping by placing all the vegetables and herbs in a blender and processing until finely chopped. Stir in vinegar, sugar and lime. Chill.

5 For the chips, heat the oven to 200°C. Lay the slices on a lightly greased baking tray. Lightly spray with oil and bake for 25-30 minutes, turning halfway through.

6 Pan-fry the burgers.

7 Halve buns and add lettuce, tomato and onion slices to each. Add a burger, some topping and chilli sauce, if desired.  Serve with beetroot and kumara chips on the side.

What we did…

… to make a lower-kilojoule, higher-fibre burger meal:

• A traditional burger recipe can use up to 600g minced beef so we reduced this to 450g by adding some couscous to give the burger extra bulk and fibre. We also used extra-lean beef mince rather than full-fat mince.
• We pan-fried our burger with a little spray oil. Traditional recipes may call for burgers to be cooked in more oil.
• We reduced kilojoules by using a selection of vegetables and fresh herbs mixed with white wine vinegar and lime juice instead of mayonnaise.