More food questions I am too petrified to ask under my real name:

[mumsnetphariah]

Chicken nuggets - since that famous scene with Jamie Oliver putting the arse end of a chicken in a blender and announcing that these are the constituent ingredients of chicken nuggets, I've been making home made chicken nuggets.

My scarily daring question is - having now seen on the packing of chicken dippers "Now made from 100% breast meat" are chicken dippers respectable again?

Burgers - again, anything wrong with the better quality shop bought burgers which specify made from 100% beef? - or is there a good reason to have to slavishly continue with making my own?

What sort of quantities - I'm not a 'natural' cook - am fine with a recipe to follow as long as it's pretty specific.

Don't care about keeping up illusions, me!!!

My grandma was the offal queen, and although I love liver, kidneys, hearts and haggis, I could never quite get the point of tripe.

rofl at 'mumsnetpariah'
A brill idea!

Tripe??
Dunno,you can't by it for love nor money!
Used to be thousands of tripe dressers oop north.
Now there are about three.

I'll never forget the old giffer who lived in the pub where I used to work, muttering about the menu with all its new-fangled foreign rubbish (we're talking lasagne here)who then put some bowls of tripe out on the bar and was most disgruntled that no-one ate any. Apparently it was ridiculous to dismiss it without trying it...

It is woman!

I find that the breadcrumbs (dry) and the egg(wet) balance each other out, so use neither.

500g beef steak mince (not extra lean else it dries out), 1 finely chopped onion, black pepper.
I use chef rings to make them into burger shapes but are easy to do by hand too. Fry/grill/bbq/griddle - don't overcook, should still be juicy, and pink if you Do Pink.

Tripe is all chew and no taste IMO

I know it is. just made me smile coz I know for a fact he'd never eaten pasta in his life!

My burger recipe:

500g high-fat mince (20% ideally)
1 egg
1 or 2 slices of brown bread, minced (bread crumbs, essentially)
1 onion, minced

I pulse bread and onions in the food processor thingy. Mix it all together. Add a pinch of crushed chillis if wanted. Make fist-sized balls, then smush flatter with flipper.

This is a staple in our house.

I use Nigel Slater's recipes for burgers - meat and a bit of onion. Make them into thin patties and fry in a bit of olive oil. Tiny bit of garlic helps. He has several versions.

On Saturday I had a small piece of steak left over. Minced in my tiny hand held blender - fab. Serve with chips and salad.

Agree that "100% beef" isn't necessarily what it seems

of course, even better to buy a piece of meat, mince it yourself then make the burgers

Cheers Mrs B and NQC!!

Will be attempting this soon - probably next week as am ridiculously busy this weekend and DD has a party on Friday night and a friend coming over for tea tomorrow.

I suffer from 'crumbly burgers' too. Will try NQC's recipe. On posh days I do Delia's meatballs (beef and pork mince and mortadella, I think) which everyone loves.

Mine generally do not crumble. A few tips:

• press burgers quite hard into balls when making balls
• leave them to cook quite a bit on the first side before turning
• you can use 2 eggs if cooking for plenty of people. you'd want to use a bit more bread probably, then, too

Enid - you're lovely but completely mad

To avoid crumbly burgers, really squelch the mince together in your fist as you mix it all up. you can't just whisk a fork through it!

MumsnetPariah - if the bought burgers say '100% steak mince', or the like, they should be bollock-free. M&S do 100% Aberdeen Angus Steak burgers. They taste good.

Moondog - my local butchers sells tripe. Problem is I wouldn't recommend eating it after posting you some......

We make our own burgers for barbeques. Have discovered that they are far better if frozen and cooked from frozen

I can confirm the binding properties of eggs. I made some pork mince meat balls last night - it looked quite bound (if that's the right word) but when I fried them they all crumbled and fell apart, so I whizzed an egg into the mixture and the next batch was fine. I think there's a latin phrase I could put now. ergo something or other

moondog I have a pig's ear in my larder, if I send it to you will you eat it?

(sadly I am all out of chicken's arseholes though)

you could order your own even

here, the snout looks tasty too

qed. quod est demonstrandum. "thus is it proved".

that was for twwtswah!