As mentioned in our Facebook post – Monday night we made lamb burgers for dinner.  This wast really a planned out meal, it was born more out of needing to use up some lamb ground lamb we had on hand.  Needless to say we were missing several of Giada’s suggested ingredients for the lamb burgers so we improvised.  You can find the original recipe here.

The main changes we made shifted us away from perishable ingredients to dry ones we had on hand in the pantry.  Herbs, bread crumbs, and produce were all adjusted from the original recipe to what we made:

• We replaced the parsley and basil it the recipe with dry product we had on hand. I did re-hydrate the basil a little in olive oil the make the “dressing.”
• We dropped the milk from the recipe finding the mixture wet enough as is.
• I subbed plain bread crumbs for herbed ones we had on hand and cut the salt by half to off-set.
• In place of the sun-dried tomatoes we used tubed tomato paste concentrate (which is great stuff you should have on hand).
• Finally we replaced the tomato slices with diced cherry tomatoes as we are months away from getting decent tomatoes in Colorado.

Out side of those tweaks we also adjusted the directed cook time and heat as our range runs quite hot. Another lesson learned the hard way, med-low on my range is med-high on most ranges.  Figuring this out has stopped me from burning a lot of things.  A total cook time of 12-16 minutes seemed a high so we adjusted down both heat and time down. Reducing those prevented the lamb burgers from getting dried out but your mileage will vary based on your equipment.  For a side dish we pair this with some quick roasted asparagus.