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Lamburgers
THIN BACON STRIPS TOOTHPICKS GROUND FRESH LAMB SALT Season lamb lightly with salt, roll into cylinders like small hot dogs, and wrap each cylinder in bacon, pinning it down with a toothpick.
Then dip each roll quickly in: 2 TABLESPOONS BUTTER Lamburger Sauce WORCESTERSHIRE JUICE OF I LEMON I TEASPOON DRY MUSTARD 2 TEASPOONS SALT 1/2 TABLESPOON Fry your lamburgers and eat with any sauce that may be left.
Be it frankfurter or wienerwurst, everybody has his pet dog and either dresses it with a bale of sauerkraut, slathers it with mustard, or sluices it with molten chili sauce, as they do down along the Tex-Mex border.
A grill-side variation on the hot dog, made with ground lamb rather than sausage. The construction is straightforward; the sauce quantities as printed are incomplete, so treat them as a guide and season by taste.
- The sauce, as givenThe list runs 2 tablespoons butter, Worcestershire, the juice of 1 lemon, 1 teaspoon dry mustard, 2 teaspoons salt, and a half tablespoon of something unnamed. Worcestershire has no quantity either. A workable reading is melted butter with a tablespoon or so of Worcestershire, the lemon juice, and the mustard; 2 teaspoons salt is heavy for that volume and is better halved, since the lamb is already salted.
- Grind and fatGround lamb sold today is commonly around 80/20, which holds a cylinder well. Very lean leg mince will crumble; if that is all you have, work in a spoonful of the melted butter before shaping.
- Shaping so they holdHandle the meat as little as possible but compress each cylinder firmly, about the thickness of a frankfurter and 4 inches long. Chill the shaped rolls for 20 minutes before wrapping; cold lamb keeps its shape when the bacon tightens over the heat.
- Bacon and toothpicksThin-cut bacon is what the recipe calls for, and it is the practical choice: thick slices are unlikely to render before the lamb overcooks. Soak wooden toothpicks in water for ten minutes if you are cooking over live coals, and pull them out before serving.
- Cook them throughGround meat needs 160F at the center, unlike a whole lamb chop. Over medium coals or in a heavy skillet, that is roughly 10 to 12 minutes with frequent turning so every side of the bacon crisps.
- When to use the sauceButter and lemon dipped on before frying will scorch and smoke. The better order is to fry the rolls, then brush or roll them in the sauce off the heat, which is also what the closing line about eating them with the leftover sauce suggests.
- YieldA pound of ground lamb makes about eight cylinders and needs roughly eight thin bacon slices. That serves three or four in a roll, or six as an appetizer straight off the toothpick.