Greek Lamb Burgers – GF/DF, Whole30, Paleo
Hey everyone it’s Wellington on a plate time again! WOAP is an amazing food festival every August where local restaurants, bars and cafes host special events and create one off menus featuring their best skills. This used to be my favorite event in Wellington until I sorted out my food intolerances and now, I can rarely find any event that suits my GF/DF and chickpea free diet.
One of the highlights of this month long festival is the WOAP Burger Wellington segment that features a special burger paired with a local Garage Project Beer. It’s definitely a big Wellington thing to go around and taste as many of these special burgers as you can because they are only available during August. This year there are 218 different burgers so you can see that this is serious business!
But for me and many people with food intolerances, we have some serious WOAP FOMO. Very few of the offerings fit our diet as they always seem to use gluten and dairy. It is my personal dream that one day soon, some forward thinking restaurants will make a paleo style burger for those of us who can not eat a big fluffy bun. Imagine that!
Just to show you how crazy these burgers are, I found one on this years menu that is Gluten Free (but not dairy free) – “Two custom blended beef patties with three-cheese fondue, iceberg, bacon jam, pickles and onion rings in a ‘milk’ bun, with cheese-fondue curly fries.” from Beach Babylon. It’s just so hard to get something both gluten free AND dairy free out there!
Because of this Burger FOMO, a good friend suggested that I share a burger recipe so we can feel like we are taking part in the WOAP celebrations! In fact it would be quite fun to invite a bunch of friends over and throw your own WOAP dinner in your own home.
Here is one of my favorite recipes using beautiful organic NZ lamb – what’s the difference with organic and non organic lamb? Well, it’s about the grass and the chemicals used on the animal. On organic pasture, there are no weedkillers or chemical fertilizers so your lamb was eating clean green NZ pasture (which is important because those chemicals end up bioaccumulating in the tissue of the animal).
I buy my organic lamb from Commonsense Organics and Moreish Meat – ask for it at your local supermarket!
- 500g organic lamb mince finely chopped
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1/4 cup fresh mint leaves finely chopped
- 1 medium onion
- 1/2 cup fresh parsley
- 2 teaspoons dried oregano
- 1 teaspoon dried garlic (optional)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon fresh black pepper
- Lettuce leaves from romane or iceberg letuce
- 1 ripe tomato thinly sliced
- Red onion sliced into rounds
- TZATZIKI
- 1/2 large cucumber , unpeeled and grated
- 1 cup of unsweetened coconut yogurt (I use Raglan)
- 2 large garlic cloves , finely minced or grated
- 2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 Tablespoon minced fresh dill
- Add mince in a medium bowl and with a box grater, grate onion into the mince. Add herbs and seasoning and mix with hands until well combined. Form into 4 equal size burger patties and set aside.
- Make tzatziki by combining all ingredients together
- Heat a frying pan over medium heat and add a little olive oil to the pan. When hot, add burger patties and fry over medium/high heat for 3 minutes per side. Burgers will be done when you see juice starting to come out of the burgers. Set burgers aside for 5 minutes while you prepare plates with lettuce leaves, tomato, onion and tzatziki. Serve immediately and enjoy 🙂
- I love to serve this with a side of chili sauce and oven baked kumara or potoato fries.
Best suggestions for Gluten and Dairy Free WOAP Burger options:
- Viva Mexico Newtown –
- The Botanist –
- Seize –
- Comes and Goes –
- Capitol –
- Bambuchi –
I’m curious about giving some of these a try but in the meantime, I will be making my Greek Lamb Burgers at home because they tick all the boxes for me 🙂
