boerewors burger with avocado, bacon & peppadew

For any non-South African 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 are already in the meat, so I just needed to remove it from the casings and mould it 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 and 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 used crunchy lettuce, sliced tomato and finely sliced red onion too. For the sauce element, I used the 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 its 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.

Recipe Makes 2 large burgers

Print

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

 

Find me on Instagram