Thai Burger With Cucumber

I found the cheapest and delicious (that's what my friends said) recipe from Bon Appetite magazine. It only needs chicken breast and some simple ingredients. However, I have modified the recipe. So if you find the same recipe in the magazine and wonder why the weight of all the ingredients are different, you know why. Here is the recipe.

Serve 4

Chicken breast, small diced                         450g

Breadcrumb                                                  40g

Cornflour                                                       3g

Small Chilli, deseeded and finely chopped  2g

Spring onion, finely chopped                        5g 

Grated zest of 1

Juice of 1 lime

Fish Sauce                                                     1ml

Fresh Coriander, finely chopped                  15g

Whole Egg                                                     1nos

Sugar                                                              2pinches

Blackpepper, crushed                                    3gr

Salt                                                                 5pinches

For the cucumber:

Cucumber                                                       200g

Sugar                                                               5g

Light Soy Sauce                                              5ml

White vinegar                                                  5ml

Mix the breadcrumb with the small diced chicken breast in a metal bowl

Add the cornflour into the mixture

Deseed the chilli and finely chop it. The finer, the better so that it can be spreaded evenly in the mixture

Grate the zest and combine with the mixture. Slice the lime and extract the juice, but don't let the seed to drop into the mixture.

Pick the fresh coriander and finely chop it, and add into the mixture. Instead of chopping, I sliced it finely ONCE because I did not want to bruise the herbs and lose the flavour.

This is the end product of the mixture and how it has to look like after you mix all of them. Next, mix everything by hand and squeeze a big chunck or break it into a smaller pieces. At this stage, you can start preheat your oven to 180 degree celcius for later use

Get 125gr of the mixture and roll it into a ball, and give it a few taps on your palm to flatten it to a desired thickness

Cut and discard the tip and the bottom of the cucumber, deseed and discard them. Next, slice them into medium dice. Combine all the ingredients for all the marination and put them inside the chiller for a few hours.

The best part!!! Pan sear the chicken patty, give a gorgeous brown colour on both sides.  Put them in the oven and roast it for 10 minutes. It is even better to roast it in a "bag" made of parchment paper so that it cooks in its own juice (en papilotte). Once it's cooked to the right temperature (internal must reach 72 degree Celcius), let it rest for a few minutes on the plate

Serve it with a lime wedge and the cold cucumber. It is supposed to be served with fried sweet potato, but I did not buy it because I wanna save my wallet. :D I would prefer serving some salad on the plate to improve the presentation.

Why I am not using minced chicken breast instead of dice it manually ? It is because minced chicken does not have as good texture as diced chicken breast. You can actually make 2 chicken patties using 1 minced chicken breast and diced for the other breast, and compare the difference. It is actually quite a huge difference. The diced chicken breast has better texture, especially when it is chewed together with the cucumber. It is just HOLY COW!