Lamb burgers with giant chips and a cucumber, mint and onion relish

I've been making my own burgers for years now and rarely eat a burger from a takeaway as they are so easy to make!  If you're a student you can make them in advance, freeze them and cook them after a night out and save a lot of cash this way:-) As an alternative to the ubiquitous beef burger, I occasionally make lamb burgers for a change.  Here is my recipe.

Ingredients

For the Burger:
500g lamb mince (if you have a food processor, make your own by blitzing 500g cubed lamb)
Some leftover mint sauce drained to remove the liquid
1 medium onion chopped finely

For the giant chips:
2 large potatoes - I use red King Edwards by choice
Olive oil for baking
Salt

For the cucumber relish:
A dash of olive oil
1 medium onion chopped very finely
1 three inch piece of cucumber diced as finely as possible
A pinch of sugar
A tablespoon of leftover mint sauce including the mint and vinegar

Method

Cucumber relish
First make the cucumber relish.  Heat a frying pan and add a small dash of olive oil, the add the chopped onion and sauté over a medium to low heat until the onion is softened but not coloured.  Now add the mint sauce and a small pinch of sugar and reduce almost to dryness.  At this point the mix should be sweetish but you should still be able to taste the vinegar from the mint sauce.  Put the cooked onion and mint aside and leave to cool.  Once it's cooled fully mix in the cucumber and serve this with the burger and chips as an alternative to tomato ketchup.

Giant chips
Preheat the oven to 200°C.  Peel the potatoes, rinse and then cut them into either four or six lengthways - you should aim to serve three or four chips per person!  Boil them for 5 minutes in salted water then drain and leave them to stand without covering.  Add them back to the dry saucepan an cook them over a dry heat for 1 minute to drive off as much moisture as possible.  Drizzle them with olive oil and put them in the oven on a pre-heated baking tray.  Roast for 30-45 minutes turning once until golden and gorgeous!  You can make these ahead and turn the oven off before serving to keep them warm in the oven.

Lamb burgers
As lamb is very fatty it's best to use as lean a lamb mix as you can get - supermarket extra lean is good, but it's even better to mince your own if you can.  Use as little oil as possible to fry the onion off until softened.  Now add the onion to the minced lamb in a large bowl along with the drained mint and a generous helping of salt and mix together well.  Shape them into burgers and grill under a high heat until cooked to your liking.

Serve the burger with the relish, chips and a burger bun if you like and add veg or salad of your choice.