Meat­ball Burgers

(serves 4 easily)

about 1 1/2 pounds mixed ground meats: pork, beef and lamb
2 eggs
1/2 cup home­made breadcrumbs
salt and pep­per (to taste if you don’t mind raw meat and eggs, as I don’t!)

4 hard rolls
sliced red onion
sliced tomato
sliced avocado
may­on­naise with some wasabi mixed in (if you like a kick)
ketchup
rock­et leaves

The secret to this mix­ture is in the KNEAD­ING. You have to knead it like dough. So take off your rings and get in there. Make sure the bowl is big­ger than the dough by a lot, so you can real­ly move around. At the begin­ning the mix­ture will be three sep­a­rate meats and some slip­pery egg, with the bread­crumbs float­ing around. But the more you mix, knead­ing and turn­ing the bowl around, it mys­te­ri­ous­ly mar­ries togeth­er. The slip­per­i­ness merges with the bread­crumbs and the meats all make friends. After just five or six min­utes of knead­ing, the mix­ture will be com­plete­ly smooth and rel­a­tive­ly air­less and lumpless.

Form into burg­ers, tall or flat as you like. I like tall, although they’re ulti­mate­ly a com­plete mess to eat. On a very hot grill, grill the burg­ers three or four min­utes per side, depend­ing on your atti­tude toward rareness.

To assem­ble, slice the rolls in half and tear out the insides of each, putting them aside to make bread­crumbs. Every­one adds condi­ments and veg, and bob’s your uncle.