The nice folks at Waitrose asked us to pick a side and come up with a football-inspired burger, so we banged our heads together and came up with the ultimate Belgium burger.
Belgium has a strong entry for a national sandwich - the Mitraillette (which translates as the machine gun).
It's traditionally a combination of meat and veggies covered in fries served with a curious burger sauce which just happens to be called 'Brésil' sauce.
We've eschewed the traditional baguette for a classic bun, but a huge baguette could work well for large groups.
So without further ado, we bring you our adaptation.
Le Fusil de Dembele AKA The Burger Anarchy Mitraillette
Ingredients
- 200g minced chuck (70%) and skirt (30%) beef (ask your friendly Waitrose butcher to help with this)
- 375ml Duvel Golden Ale
- A couple of lemons
- Golden Granulated Sugar
- Waitrose Frites
- Sliced Dutch Gouda (Belgian cheese is hard to find)
- Sliced Port Salut cheese
- 250g good French mayonnaise
- Tomato puree
- 2 onions
- 2 carrots
- Romaine lettuce
- A large white giant bap
- Jack Hawkins slicing tomato
- A bunch of flat leaf parsley
- Salt and pepper
- Unsalted butter
- Tin of pineapple chunks in juice
Method
There are a number of things we need to prepare before the meat can hit the grill on this one, so let's tackle each in order.
Brésil sauce:
- Mix together in a medium bowl 250g Mayonnaise, 2 tbsp finely chopped onions, 2 tbsp Tomato Puree.
- Drain and chop the pineapple chunks, retaining about half the juice.
- Add the pineapple chunks to a saucepan on a high heat with 1 tbsp of sugar. Stir regularly and cook until the fruit is soft and caramelised.
- Puree the fruit in the saucepan using a small immersion blender (or a food processor if you don't have one).
- Allow the pineapple to cool down to room temperature then add to the other ingredients with 1 tbsp of lemon juice and then add salt to taste.
- Add to your sauce bottle if you want to get fancy.
Sweet bière onions:
- Halve and slice the onions (but don't dice them, you want to be able to see the half moon slices)
- Add the Duvel, 1 tbsp sugar, and bring to a steady boil in a cast iron pan.
- Add the onions and simmer until liquid reduces down (about 20-30 mins).
- Once reduced and no longer runny, place in a bowl and keep warm.
Carottes Râpées:
- Peel and finely grate 2 carrots (a Magimix is really handy here for speedy grating)
- Place in a mixing bowl, add 1 tbsp of olive oil, 1 tbsp of lemon juice, 1 tsp of sugar.
- Coarsely chop the parsley and add to the carrot mix.
- Mix it all together, add salt and pepper to taste and more lemon juice if it needs it.
NB. The carrots should only have a very light coating of dressing, you don't want them dripping otherwise it will oversaturate the burger.
Frites:
- Cook according to instructions on packet.
Seriously, boxed chips these days are so good, you don't want to faff about triple cooking some chips for this recipe.
The patty:
- Wet your hands and gently form 200g of mince into a patty roughly the size of the bap.
- Thumb a divot into the centre of the patty (to stop it from shrinking when cooking).
- Liberally salt the bottom of the patty and place in very hot cast iron frying pan or grill pan. Non-stick pans are useless to you here.
- Liberally salt top of the patty and flip halfway through cooking to your preference.
- 1 minute before the patty is ready, place a slice of gouda and port salut on top, add water to the pan and cover with a cloche or large pan lid to melt it.
The bap:
- Slice the bap, spread with butter and lightly toast in a dry frying pan.
Assemble the sandwich:
- Sauce the bottom bun
- Lettuce leaf
- Tomato slice
- Carottes Râpées
- Patty with cheese
- Sweet Biere onions
- A healthy handful of frites
- More sauce
- Add the top bun
- Rob & Simon.
- Extra special thanks to Waitrose for their help with this recipe, and the poor butcher at the Westfield branch who withstood our double mincing demands with aplomb.
- A few of the others are worth a shot, you can find them over on the Waitrose site.