Cooking for Pleasure: Spicy char-grilled Turkish meat patties

Ingredients for spicy char-grilled Turkish meat patties. (Photo by Patty Schied)

By Patty Schied

Every country has its favorite methods of cooking ground meat. In Turkey, it is popular to mix ground beef or lamb with a variety of spices including cumin, paprika, Aleppo pepper, and black pepper while adding eggs, breadcrumbs, garlic and onion.  They cook this meat mixture in a variety of ways: on the grill as kabobs, as meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce or even baked with mashed potatoes.

Because my grill is currently inoperable, I made a one-pound version of this recipe into meat patties, pan fried them then placed them on buns — a delicious alternative to the typical American style hamburger.

With the addition of bread, eggs and onion in this recipe, a pound of hamburger can stretch to six decent sized burgers, making your grocery dollar go further without the sacrifice of taste. This recipe for two pounds of meat will serve a minimum of eight people, depending on how large you make the patties.

Ingredients:

• 4 slices of day old bread, crusts removed and torn into pieces

• 2 pounds of ground lamb or beef

• ¼ cup finely chopped onion

• 4 garlic cloves, minced

• 2 eggs

• 2 teaspoons of Aleppo pepper (substitute Cayenne pepper if necessary but reduce by half)

• 1 teaspoon paprika

• 1 tablespoon cumin

• ¼ cup finely chopped Italian parsley

• Salt and freshly ground pepper

Ready to cook spicy char-grilled Turkish meat patties. (Photo by Patty Schied)

Directions:

Soak bread pieces briefly in cold water then squeeze out the excess water. Combine ground meat, bread, onion, garlic, eggs, red pepper, paprika, cumin and parsley in large bowl.  Mix thoroughly with your hands. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or until ready to use.

Decide how you wish to cook the meat.  The tastiest method is grilled, but a pan fried patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise mixed with crushed garlic pairs nicely with the meat. If you prefer grilled kabobs, serve with garlic yogurt sauce and your favorite salad.  

Garlic yogurt sauce is made by blending 2 cups of plain whole milk yogurt with four cloves of finely minced garlic and salt to taste.  It sounds a little odd, but is quite delicious, especially if you are also grilling vegetables such as eggplant, peppers, and zucchini as you cook the meat.

Cooked together, it makes a memorable meal.

• Patty Schied is a longtime Juneau resident who studied at the Cordon Bleu in London and has written a cookbook. Cooking For Pleasure appears every other week in the Juneau Independent's features. She welcomes questions about her column at patschied@yahoo.com.