Venison burgers
Makes 12 good-sized burgers
1 tsp juniper berries
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp sage leaves
2 tsp white peppercorns
7-10g of salt (around ½ tbsp)
1.5kg lean venison meat (shoulder or haunch)
500g fairly fatty free-range pork (belly or shoulder)
Put the juniper berries, bay leaves, sage, peppercorns and salt into a coffee grinder or mortar, and grind or pound until you have a fine powder.
Combine the venison and pork, and put through a mincer on a fairly coarse (5-8mm) plate. (If the butcher has minced it for you, simply combine the two.) Add the pounded spices and salt, and mix thoroughly by hand. Ideally, leave the mixture to settle for an hour or two, so the spices mellow and mingle with the meat.
Mix one more time. You can test the spicing - by frying a mini patty of the mixture and tasting - and then adjust as necessary. Form the minced, spiced meat into patties about 2cm thick and fry or barbecue them for 3-4 minutes each side, until nicely browned on the outside, and cooked through.
Serve in good-quality baps with a few slices of hot, butter-fried apple.
Learn more about ethical meats like venison in Hugh and Gelf’s online Ethical Meat Sourcing and Cooking Course or for more game recipes check out the River Cottage Game Handbook by Tim Maddams
Learn more about sourcing and cooking ethical meat:
This course extols the virtue of eating less and better meat, both for the sake of our health and also for the planet. Hugh takes you through the various meat choices in the mainstream market and leads you towards the higher welfare end of the market through a well-informed critique of the devastating effects of modern factory farming and British supermarket practice.
His polemic is reminiscent of his television campaigns around the consumption and farming of meat, and by the end of this course you’ll gain new insight into how you can source the best possible meat and make the most of every morsel.