Finally, my first non-vegetarian dish on the blog. The last five non-veg dishes I’ve made did not meet my expectations and even though they may have tasted good, I wasn’t too keen on putting up something I wasn’t totally satisfied with. Considering my whole family loves all kinds of meat and fish, there’s only been vegetarian dishes on the post so far, much to people’s surprise.

This one broke the jinx and my husband even declared it as one of the best burgers he’s ever eaten. I’m going to take that at face value, as he’s eaten a lot of burgers all over the world, and do a little happy dance in my head.

I replaced cheese and mayonnaise with the yoghurt because everyone nowadays seems to be wanting to shed some pounds – not that  burger is low calorie in its entirety, with all that bread. Still, I tried to make it as healthy as I could by adding multigrain bread crumbs, yoghurt and slicing the fat burger bun into three parts, removing the middle, and making the top and bottom as thin as I could so that you don’t get too much bread in your mouth.

There’s lots of different types of ways to pack a burger bun, but this is what I went with this time, simple, no-fuss ingredients. If you decide to try this recipe, I hope you like it as much as the hubby did.

Ingredients (makes 14)

Chicken Patty

800 gms chicken mince
2 medium onions diced finely
1 tsp salt
1 heaped tsp coriander powder
1 cup (loosely packed) chopped coriander leaves (standard measuring cup)
1 heaped tbsp minced garlic
3 slices multigrain bread
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Garlic Yoghurt

600 gms thick yoghurt (hang in muslin cloth for 1.5 hours to drain the whey)
1 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp salt
1 medium onion very finely diced
6 pickled gherkins (each about 1.5 inches long) finely diced

To Assemble

14 Burger Buns
Sliced tomatoes

Get Started (pictorial steps at the end of post)

• Throw the bread in a food processor with the garlic and whizz till it forms coarse breadcrumbs.

• In a large bowl, mix the chicken mince, onions, salt and coriander powder nicely. Then add the breadcrumb mix and coriander leaves and mix well. Add the oil to the mixture.

• Before you shape the patties, take a little bit and grill in the pan to check the flavouring, whether it’s fine or it needs more salt or coriander powder or garlic.

• Shape the mince mix into 14 patties about 1.2 cm thick and grill them in a non-stick frying pan with one tablespoon of oil per batch. You will need about two minutes per side on medium-high heat. Put a fork in the patty and pull apart a tiny bit to see there’s no pink meat remaining before removing from heat.

For the yoghurt topping

• Mix the hung yoghurt, garlic paste and salt together nicely till all the flavours come together. Then add the onion and gherkins and mix.

• Alternately, you can slice the gherkins lengthwise and place over the yoghurt instead of dicing and mixing them into the yoghurt if you want a bigger hit of gherkin.

Assembly

• Cut the burger buns in half horizontally and toast, placing cut sides down on a pan over the gas. If the burger buns are very thick, can slice off a thin layer off the top and the bottom to cut out on the ‘breadiness’.

• Place four slices of tomato on the bottom half of the bun and sprinkle some salt and pepper on it. Place the chicken patty on the tomato and top with the yoghurt mix. Put the top on and relish your delicious burger.