Making burgers with the children

Apologies to vegetarians, this is about meat! Please feel free to look away now. The making 'pork and apple burgers' grew into a big, experimental general burger making session and the children loved it so much that I felt it deserved a post of its own, albeit a fairly short one. Unfortunately I really wasn't expecting it to be quite such a hit - either the making or the eating - so I don't have lots of lovely photos. I have a few, generally fuzzy photos with little glimpses of a very messy kitchen in the background!

We gathered together a selection of meat - pork, lamb, turkey and beef, herbs - we had fresh parsley, mint, basil and oregano and some dried sage and thyme too, and some vegetables - grated apple and carrot, sweetcorn and tomato puree, as well as salt and pepper. I found it worked best to put the salt and pepper and even the herbs, veggies etc into small bowls so the children could help themselves without getting raw meat fingers all over salt/pepper mills etc.

And each of the children had their own bowl to create their own variations of burgers. There were quite a few combinations created, mostly fairly conventional - like lamb and mint, or pork and apple, but a few slightly more adventurous options too. My personal favourite was turkey, grated carrot and apple, parsley and salt and pepper. It was really delicious, especially with tomato slices in the bun.



And I'm sure it also helped that they all helped cook them on a quick, little BBQ immediately they'd been made.

It really was a perfect children's activity - it appealed to all of them, kept them occupied and making for quite some time and we had tea sorted at the end of it. Couldn't ask for more!

Sally.