Everything you love about a Mediterranean shawarma, but made at home in 30 minutes! The delicious tahini sauce and lamb patty are sandwiched with a mixture of fun toppings and fresh herbs.
| Level: | Easy |
| Total: | 30 min |
| Active: | 30 min |
| Yield: | 4 servings |
Ingredients
- 1 clove garlic
- 3/4 cup yogurt
- 1/4 cup tahini paste
- 1 lemon
- 1/2 teaspoon cumin
- Salt
- 1 1/2 pounds ground lamb or ground white and dark meat chicken combined
- Salt and pepper
- 1 tablespoon (scant palm full) cumin
- 1 tablespoon coriander
- 1 tablespoon paprika
- 1 tablespoon sumac, optional
- 1/2 tablespoon (1/2 a palm full) turmeric
- 1/2 tablespoon ground cardamom
- 1 teaspoon (1/3 palm full) crushed red pepper flakes or ground pepperoncini
- About 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
- About 1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg
- 2 large cloves garlic
- 1 small onion
- A small handful each mint leaves and flat parsley tops
- EVOO
- 4 sesame seed rolls such, as Big Marty’s or brioche rolls, split
- Gem romaine, or lettuce of choice
- Pickled hot cherry peppers or jalapeno peppers
- Thinly sliced Persian or seedless cucumbers
- Whole leaves of parsley and/or cilantro
- Very thinly sliced fennel and onion, white or red, dressed with lemon juice and EVOO, salt and pepper
- Long bamboo toothpicks with knot on top or frilled burger toothpicks
- Fancy chips of choice
- 4 giant pita
- A jar of giardiniera
- Israeli pickles (canned with garlic) or half sour deli pickles
Instructions
- Gather your ingredients.
- For the sauce: Peel a clove of garlic with a crack of knife against the heel of your hand. In a small bowl, whisk up yogurt, tahini, the juice of 1 lemon and cumin. Then grate the garlic into the sauce with a zester or paste it with a knife (add a fat pinch of salt). Whisk sauce again.
- For the burgers: Preheat a cast-iron skillet or heavy griddle or frying pan over medium to medium-high heat.
- Place ground lamb or chicken in a mixing bowl. Season the meat with salt and pepper, cumin, coriander, paprika, sumac if using, turmeric, cardamom, crushed red pepper, allspice and nutmeg. Crack 2 cloves garlic and grate them into the bowl or finely chop. Peel the onion and grate about 3 tablespoons of it into the bowl. Finley chop the mint and parsley then add them to the lamb. Combine all the ingredients and mound up. Score meat into 4 equal portions and form 4 patties, thinner at the center for even cooking.
- To prepare the burgers, add EVOO, 1 slow turn of the pan, to skillet (a thin layer to just glaze the surface). Add patties and cook about 7 minutes for lamb, a minute or two longer for chicken, turning occasionally. If cooking lamb, press down with spatula when you turn the patties — lean ground lamb tends to tighten as it cooks more so than other ground meats.
- When you remove the patties they can be served as such but for a more authentic facsimile of shawarma, we rest the patties and very thinly slice them on a bias. Regardless, while the burgers cook, prepare your toppings of choice.
- Assemble burgers: bun bottoms, sauce, patty or thinly sliced shawarma, lettuce, hot cherry peppers, cucumbers, herb leaves, dressed fennel and onions, bun top. OR split a pita and fill with giardiniera and Israeli pickles.
- Poke with a couple of toothpicks and split burgers down the middle. Serve burgers with chips.
Reviews
Fabulous! So tasty!
Amazing!!
Had some extra grapes and wanted to use almond flour. The cake has a great texture and flavor. Next time I will cut the grapes lengthwise. It was kind of odd with whole grapes and they were all at the bottom. The glaze makes the cake. For that, it took longer than 12 minutes. Probably because the grapes were pretty juicy. It was about 30 minutes to get a nice glaze consistency. And it was really good! Will definitely make again.
This recipe – in fact this whole episode – went over like a house afire with my family. It’s going to be on HEAVY rotation. To see if I could, I timed myself while making the whole episode’s worth of stuff, and made it (except for plating) in 31 minutes (using “garbage bowl” liberally and doing a lot of frenzied sliding of spice jars across the counter to get them out of the way). I missed out on the sumac because Amazon sent me the wrong spice, but all other spices were as called for, “measured” by palmfuls as Rachael does it.
The primary change I made was to make these burgers as 2-oz sliders because I was feeding a family with very different sizes of appetite (one son ate 4, one ate 1, daughter ate 1 without the bun, I ate 1 with and 1/2 without the bun, my husband ate 2 but also one slider bun with just the toppings because he forgot to put the lamb patty on! He was halfway through it before he realized it because he liked the toppings so much). So the cooking took longer because my only cast-iron pan (which I think put a delicious crust on the patties) was only big enough for 5-6 of the little patties. I got the first 10, out of 16 (I used 2 lb of lamb because of my kids’ love of lamb), done in that 31-min time period. Because they were smaller, they cooked faster – but there were more of them, so the total number took longer. I toasted the buns in the oven on a baking sheet while the patties were cooking, I subbed plain thinly sliced cukes for the fennel because I’m the only one who likes fennel, and because I had about 3/4 cup of plain yogurt left after making the tahini-yogurt sauce and was already cutting up cukes, garlic, and mint, I just mixed some of those into the yogurt to make some quick tzatziki.
WHAT a hit. And it’s so exciting to try to beat the clock! I’ve never yet done it, much less done it with Rachael’s grace and ended up with a plated meal that looks as pretty as hers, but it sure is fun to try.
OMG!! These are so good! Used the lamb. Discovered by accident they slice thin much better and really easily after cooling in the fridge overnight. Might not be 30 min but worth the wait.
THIS IS THE BEST!!!! I made this with ground turkey for 7 people, ages 4 through 50 and we ALL loved it, and topped it as we wanted. Yes, the 4 year old topped it with bbq sauce, but that’s pretty good. I’d drink the sauce straight it is that delicious, and please please dont skip the fennel-onion topping (even if you dont usually love fennel). I had 1 person who doesnt like fennel but tried it and said it was perfect with the burger. Making this again soon!
Why does Food network post top rating recipes that have NO stars?