Burger with a pork and Chinese-sausage patty and a wombok slaw

I've always liked the taste of Chinese sausage (lup cheong), which I grew up knowing as 'wind-dried sausage'. I thought I'd try to make a pork burger with finely-chopped Chinese sausage mixed in with the pork mince. I've experimented with it a bit, and this version is quite tasty.

The following quantities are for making 1 burger.

Ingredients

• Patty
• Chinese sausage, 1
• Pork mince, approx 1/4 of a 500g pack (can use a bit more for larger patty)
• Toasted sesame oil, about 1 tsp
• Five-spice powder, about 1/2 tsp
• Wombok slaw
• Wombok (aka Chinese Cabbage)
  
• if you halve it lengthways, then cut about a 4cm-wide crosswise strip, that's about enough. It'd be preferable to cut this strip out part way down from the top end of the wombok, so you get some of the crunchy hard parts of it in the slaw.
• Red onion, a wedge approx 1cm wide at thickest part
• Mayonnaise, 2 tbsp
• Soy sauce, 2 tsp
• Brown sugar, 2 tsp
• Rice vinegar, 1/2 tsp
• Hamburger bun, 1
• Additional
• Salt
• Aluminium foil, for resting the burger patty after cooking
• Alternatives: baking paper; or a bowl that can be placed top down over a plate, with the patty sitting underneath it
  

 

I use the one chopping board for both the slaw and preparing the patty, so I first cut up the vegetables for the slaw.

First, use the knife the cut the hamburger bun in half, then put it aside.

Cut the wombok crossways into fairly thin strips (maybe 3mm wide).

Thinly slice the red onion lengthways.

Combine the vegetables in a bowl.

 

Make the patty.

Finely chop the Chinese sausage. I slice it lengthways, then lie each half flat on the chopping board and slice the top half of them. Then I cut all these long strips into thinner strips, then dice them up.

Spread out the diced sausage, and break up (sprinkle) the pork mince over the top of it.

Sprinkle the sesame oil then five-spice powder over the meat.

Gently mix it all together, then form into a patty about 2cm (or, if you want, a little less) thick. It's important for it not to be too thin, as that will cause it to dry out during cooking. If the cooked patty is dry, it's much less tasty.

Cook the patty and prepare the rest of the slaw.

Preheat a frying pan on a medium temperature (you want the patty to sizzle and fry while cooking, but fairly gently).

Add the patty. Sprinkle a bit of salt on its top side. Cook that side for approximately 7 minutes, and while doing so prepare the slaw, as per the following instructions.

Add the ingredients for the slaw sauce (mayo, soy sauce, sugar, vinegar) to a small bowl and whisk together. Taste, and add additional quantities of any of the ingredients if necessary. For my taste, you want it to taste like a mayonaise with a subtle soy-sauce flavour, that is sweeter than normal mayonnaise, and a bit tangier than normal mayonnaise.

Mix the sauce in with the wombok and red onion. 

Once the patty has cooked for approximately 7 minutes on that side, flip it over, and sprinkle some salt on its top side. Cook this side for a further ~7 minutes.

While it's cooking, get ~40cm of aluminium foil, and fold it in half.

When the burger patty has cooked for 7 minutes on its second side, take it out of the pan and put it between the folded up faces of the foil, and then close up the open sides of it, to form a pocket, in order to rest the meat.

Lightly toast the buns

Turn the heat on the stove down a little bit. Use some paper towels to wipe out the oil and burnt bits from the frying pan, and place the halves of the buns cut-side down in the pan. Rotate the buns a bit every ~30 seconds. You want to very lightly toast them, so they have a slight firmness, and maybe a very light brownness.

(If the pan's not large enough to fit both bun halves at once, just do them one at a time. As an alternative to toasting them in the pan, you can toast them in an oven, at around 150 degrees C, or slightly higher).

Assemble the burger.

The time it takes to toast the buns will have given the patty time to rest. Place the patty on the bottom half of the bun, and then the slaw on top of that, followed by the top half of the bun.