Boerewors burger with avocado, bacon & peppadew

For any non-South Africans visiting this recipe post, let me explain. Boerewors is a South African sausage traditionally made from a blend of beef and pork mince and has a load of spices with a dominant one being coriander. It is generally rolled into a coil shape and cooked over a braai (barbecue) and this is where the fat renders out and the smoky flavour locks in.

It’s pretty much iconic here and loved by people from all corners of the spectrum. All butcheries will have their own special flavour blend and as a nation, we love to have competitions to see who has the best one. I decided since its Heritage Month to come up with a South African flavoured boerewors burger and top it off with crispy bacon, sliced avocado and Peppadews (pickled piquant peppers)– another thoroughly home-grown product.

All the spices were already in the meat, so I just needed to remove them from the casings and mould them into a patty. I’m not the biggest fan of boerewors to be honest as I find it too fatty, but I do quite like a good venison one. For this recipe, I used the Woolworths Grabouw sausage because it looked really lean. It came in a thin rendition and a fatter one. The thinner one looked better than the one I used. I’m not sure if this is the standard recipe or whether it was a freak batch, but it was so lean I needed to add a splash of olive oil to the pan when I cooked it. It also tasted absolutely delicious and is now my go-to boerie.

I made big patties with the sausage and used about 150gms per burger but you could make them thinner if you prefer. I love fresh salad bits on my burger and use crunchy lettuce, sliced tomato and finely sliced red onion too.

For the sauce element, I used Woolies Sriracha mayo, which is spicy and extremely tasty. Use whatever mayo you have but I think a splash of hot sauce adds a lot of value here. You could also do a combination of tomato sauce and mayo. There are no rules when it comes to custom-making a burger. I love crispy fried streaky bacon on my burger, sliced avocados – which are still very much in season, and a few cut-up Pepperdews to add sweet heat.

Oh, and I think it’s absolutely imperative to butter your rolls and toast these first. I do this on a hot griddle pan and it gives the buns and burger a lovely flavour.

 If you are celebrating Heritage Day on Monday I hope you have a delicious day.

A few of my other favourite burger recipes:

Pork burger with apple & sage

A crunchy jerk fried chicken burger

The Bloody Mary burger

Salmon burger on a black brioche bun:

A vegetarian burger with black mushroom roasted with pesto

Recipe Makes 2 large burgers

Boerewors burger with avocado, bacon & peppadew

Print Recipe

Prep Time:15 minutes mins

Cook Time:10 minutes mins

Ingredients

• 2 sesame seed burger buns buttered
• 300 gms lean boerewors
• ½ avocado sliced
• 4 rashers of streaky bacon
• Lettuce
• Tomato
• Finely sliced red onion
• Spicy mayonnaise/or mayonnaise
• 2 – 3 peppadews sliced

Instructions

• Heat up a non-stick griddle pan or frying pan, or have your braai lit and the coals around medium.
• Split the burger buns, butter them and grill on the buttered side for a couple of minutes until toasted.
• Remove the casings from the sausage and divide the meat into two 150gms patties. Shape and flatten. Fry or grill the burger patties until golden brown and cooked through
• While the burgers are cooking, fry the 4 rashers of bacon until crispy.
• Prepare all the other burger toppings.
• Assemble the burger with lettuce, tomato and spicy mayonnaise. Top with the burger patty, bacon, red onion, sliced avocado and sliced peppadews.

Servings: 2

Author: Sam Linsell

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