Ok, made these last night, too die for! Just made it up as I went along. You do in Greece get some lovely little meatball like burgers that they grill in the summer, which have fresh mint in them and they eat them cold or hot. I took the idea a bit further and made these:

Ground Beef 1 lb
Lemon Zest
Lemon Juice 1/2 lemon
About 6 fresh mint leaves
1/2 tsp dried mint
1/2 tsp dried oregano
3 cloves chopped garlic
feta cheese couple of chunks crumbled
salt and pepper
mix it all up and form burgers

I grilled these on the bbq and put them on french rolls with freshly made tzatziki with Trader Joes Greek Yogurt, another too die for..Oh and grilled onions. They were so packed with flavor and the lemon zest and juice really lightened them up from being to heavy. TRY THEM!!!

Tzatziki

1 cup greek style yogurt ( no non-fat stuff here)
2 tblsp chopped garlic
1/2 cup shredded cucumber (english)
s & P

This sounds really yummy!!!
just a couple of questions the first essential for being able to reproduce the burgers and the second just because I'm so curious:
how much is a "chunk of feta cheese"?
what do you mean by "english" cucumber?????

quote:

Originally posted by Giulia da Urbino:
This sounds really yummy!!!
just a couple of questions the first essential for being able to reproduce the burgers and the second just because I'm so curious:
how much is a "chunk of feta cheese"?
what do you mean by "english" cucumber?????

I couldn't think how to tell you on the cheese, it was like a two by two inch chunk that I crumbled into the burgers and english cucumbers are the long skinny ones without seeds unlike american ones. I never bought a cuke in Italy maybe they are the same as english ones...any cucumber will do though. Buon apetito!

The English cucumbers are grown in hot houses here in the US. They are also called 'burp'-less. Here's a page with pictures of the different types we have available here in the US.

The burgers sound great btw.

quote:

Originally posted by Marta:
The English cucumbers are grown in hot houses here in the US. They are also called 'burp'-less. Here's a page with pictures of the different types we have available here in the US.

The burgers sound great btw.

Gee Marta, that was interesting... the cuke page I mean....I never knew they came in so many different shapes and sizes! That Armenian one is bit scary...

Wow Marta! Great page you posted!
Actually I think that here you can normally find 3 or 4 different "families" of cucumbers and I'm sure that each family includes quite a few varieties... but they're all just called "cetriolo" unless you're buying the seeds for planting them!
Anyway now I do have a clear image of an English Cuke! Same as German cukes as I know them but not very often seen here.

Lesfaye - great recipe. I remember one I have done a couple of times that was similar, but uses ground lamb instead of ground beef. IT was yummy, but I don't remember where I found the recipe.

Judy

Lesfaye - that sounds like a delicious recipe for the burgers. Will have to try.

I buy only English cukes now, and in my area they are available in all the supermarkets.

Terry

These are the best - I've made them numerous times and love the flavour combinations.

Lamb Burgers with Oregano, Mint, and Cucumber-Garlic Sauce

Sauce:
4 oz english cucumber
2 tsp minced garlic
8 tbsp chopped mint, divided
1/2 cup plain yoghurt
tabasco

Peel and grate cucumber. Drain in a collander while preparing remaining ingredients. In a small bowl mix all sauce ingredients (using only 2 tbsp of the mint!). Refrigerate.

Burgers:
2 lbs ground lamb
2/3 cub crumbled feta
1/s cup minced sweet white onion
3 tbsp minced oregano
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper

Mix all ingredients (including the remaining 6 tbsp of minced mint). Shape into 6 patties. Refrigerate for at least 15 minutes prior to grilling. Grill for 8 - 10 minutes, turing once.

Serve on toasted buns topped with sliced tomatoes and sauce.

From - Weber's Real Grilling (2005)

I'm mkaing these for a casual dinner party on Sunday.

quote:

Originally posted by lesfaye:
You do in Greece get some lovely little meatball like burgers that they grill in the summer, which have fresh mint in them and they eat them cold or hot.

I think you are referring to "biftekia". Use fennel-like anetho if possible (substitute with finocchietto selvatico in Italy). Also, I would not use feta in this dish. greek use cheeses that are similar to semihard pecorino cheeses, so a mild pecorino or a mixture of pecorino and grana IMHO works better.

quote:

2 tblsp chopped garlic

OUCH! In a cup of yogurt I usualy add only one clove of garlic, pressed, and even so it comes out stronger than most tzaziki I ate in Greece! I use about 1/2 a regular cucumber, that I julienne and sprinkle with salt. I let it sit for 15 minutes than squeeze out the moisture (and excess salt) before adding it to the yogurt, with a couple teaspoons of extrevirgin olive oil and no salt or pepper. The results aren't bad.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Alice Twain:
I think you are referring to "biftekia". Use fennel-like anetho if possible (substitute with finocchietto selvatico in Italy). Also, I would not use feta in this dish. greek use cheeses that are similar to semihard pecorino cheeses, so a mild pecorino or a mixture of pecorino and grana IMHO works better.

Alice, I used feta in my burgers because I like it not because it is traditional and it was great you should try it!

Well, I do not eat burgers anyway. I eat little meat at all ^_^. The point with feta is that feta does not bind the ground meat properly, so the burgers/patties/meatballs tend break up if you use feta IN them. Making meatballs you may place a piece of feta in the middle and lock it inside with meat, ,aking burgers you may crumble some uncooked feta on top. If mixed with the meat, it may cause the whole thing to fall apart.

Perhaps the feta we get in NA is different than you get in Europe. I made the recipe listed above (ignoring the typos of course! LOL) last night and the burgers had no trouble staying together. In fact the burgers were extremely dense. Perhaps lamb is different than ground beef as well (less fat?)

Leftovers for lunch today - the fridge in the office will smell of garlic - my colleagues will be soooooo pleased!

Alice, you are not by any mean obligated to try this receipe, it was something my family enjoyed so I wanted to share it...the burgers kept together perfectly I did not use very much feta and it was French feta I used by the way. Lovely!

I don't usually make burgers because of the problem of them falling apart because I can't bind them with eggs (I'm allergic to eggs), so I didn't think much about it when reading the above recipes. But now that it is mentioned, do you think the feta cheese actually holds them together?

My husband doesn't particularly care for several ingredients in them but he is off playing bridge for a week pretty soon, so I will try them then. Maybe I'm just too rough when I turn them over to make mine always fall apart.

I'm going to be using turkey burger. Has anyone tried that variation?

quote:

Originally posted by Earline:
I don't usually make burgers because of the problem of them falling apart because I can't bind them with eggs (I'm allergic to eggs), so I didn't think much about it when reading the above recipes. But now that it is mentioned, do you think the feta cheese actually holds them together?

My husband doesn't particularly care for several ingredients in them but he is off playing bridge for a week pretty soon, so I will try them then. Maybe I'm just too rough when I turn them over to make mine always fall apart.

I'm going to be using turkey burger. Has anyone tried that variation?

Earline, no I don't think that the feta cheese holds them together, really the only way that burgers hold together without a binder is to buy ground beef with at least 15% fat in them. I actually used 20%, the higher the fat content the more they will stay together. I have tried it with lean meat and they just fall apart.

quote:

Originally posted by lesfaye:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Earline:
I don't usually make burgers because of the problem of them falling apart because I can't bind them with eggs (I'm allergic to eggs), so I didn't think much about it when reading the above recipes. But now that it is mentioned, do you think the feta cheese actually holds them together?

My husband doesn't particularly care for several ingredients in them but he is off playing bridge for a week pretty soon, so I will try them then. Maybe I'm just too rough when I turn them over to make mine always fall apart.

I'm going to be using turkey burger. Has anyone tried that variation?

Earline also, together with using higher fat beef, once you put them on the grill don't touch them or move them around, they need to get a crust on them and then they will stay together when you flip them..

Cheese alone is not enough to hold a burger toghether, but the wrong cheese (too high in water content) can go a long way in order to break it down, while a high fat cheese like Parmigiano Reggiano can help keeping them toghther.

You may try making Italian "svizzere" (actually "bistecca alla svizzera", or Swiss steak: don't ask me if thye make it at all in Switzerland!), which are not exactly bugers, more a kind of shapeless meat pattie, with ground beef, fresh salsiccia (not the highly spiced and dried Italian sausages that seem to be more common in the US, I am referring to the kind of sausage we use in the north, extremely fresh and just lightly spiced) and grated Parmigiano Reggiano. About 1 pound of meat, 2/3 beef, 1/3 salsiccia, two handfuls of cheese, mix and work really well, you may need to add a drop of milk to the mixture, form pattie with your hands and cook on a very hot non-stick pan, being careful not to break while turning. THis is a typical hospital food, with less pork, but you can spice it up by adding onion, garlic, carrot, pepper, other spices you may like, prosciutto fat, etc. They don't keep toghether too well, but the point in svizzera is that ti must be soft enough to be eaten by a toohless elder or a small child.

What is the difference between French Feta and Greek Feta? I loved feta when I was in Greece but it doesn't seem to taste the same when I buy it here in Vegas
Vegas

Well, French feta is not feta. Feta is a cheese produced in the Balcanic area, mainly Greece and Bulgary. It has been imited in several countries, including Danemark, but I would not trust Danish feta (or French feta) anymore than I would trust an Italian Havarti or a Spanish Bleu d'Auvergne (or grana cheese produced in the US). ^_^ By the way, Greek feta is now DOP, so the Greek producers could soon enforce the EU regulations to force the producers feta-like cheeses to use a different name, just as well as nobody apart from the Parmigiano Reggiano registered producers of the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Piacenza, Bologna and Mantova (the latter three limited to certain areas) can label or call their product "Parmigiano Reggiano".

Thank you....I am not sure what DOP means but I got the point. I guess I never thought too much about where the cheeses had originated. We have finally gotten a Whole Foods Store near by and they have a great selection of various cheese products so each week I am bringing home a different one to try. Only thing is that I now have forgotten what the first ones were. We have liked most of them. I want to try these burgers and I want to make the tatziki which I loved when I was in Greece. I tried making it a couple years ago but it tasted awful. Now I think maybe I didn't use the greek style yogurt. I noticed the other day that Whole Foods carries that, if not there is a Trader Joe's a few miles away and I'll go there. Thanks again.
Vegas

quote:

Originally posted by Alice Twain:
Well, French feta is not feta. Feta is a cheese produced in the Balcanic area, mainly Greece and Bulgary. It has been imited in several countries, including Danemark, but I would not trust Danish feta (or French feta) anymore than I would trust an Italian Havarti or a Spanish Bleu d'Auvergne (or grana cheese produced in the US). ^_^ By the way, Greek feta is now DOP, so the Greek producers could soon enforce the EU regulations to force the producers feta-like cheeses to use a different name, just as well as nobody apart from the Parmigiano Reggiano registered producers of the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Piacenza, Bologna and Mantova (the latter three limited to certain areas) can label or call their product "Parmigiano Reggiano".

Wow am I sorry I mentioned putting feta in a burger...yikes!

Well, I learned about the Chianti Wine Police when we had our wine tasting tour through the Koinè school. And when we were shopping for a leather coat in Florence I found out about the Leather Police.

So maybe we have Feta Cheese Police too?