Coriander, garlic and chilli are a wonderful flavour-combination that forms the heart of so many delicious dishes. And this low carb recipe uses them to best effect with stunning results! Whether beef, chicken, lamb, turkey of pork; home-made burgers are incredibly easy to make and with a bit of inspiration can incorporate no end of interesting and exotic flavours. These beautifully succulent turkey-burgers have an oriental feel; packed to the gunnels with garlic, red-chillies, fresh herbs and ground coriander. This follows through into the egg-fried-rice, which mirrors the flavours and rounds the dish off perfectly!

If you’re a regular visitor to this blog, you’ll know that cauliflower-rice is a tried and tested staple of the low carb kitchen; indeed I couldn’t live without it! It truly transforms the look and feel of a meal, providing ‘substance’ and adding that all important ‘fill-factor’ to dishes which might otherwise risk feeling a little anaemic!  Eggs are brilliant on a low carb regime, and the additional protein provides the final ‘cherry on the cake’ in terms of filling you up & adding luxury! No-one likes to leave the table still feeling hungry, so the fuller the better, is what I say!

The only real carb content in this dish comes from the cellular-carbohydrate in the cauliflower itself; and with a net carb value of 1.5g per 100g, they’ll be no insulin-racking or impact to blood-sugars. This means that diabetics and ketogenic-dieters can ‘fill their boots’, as can those with a gluten-intolerance or followers of the paleo-plan. There’s plenty to go around!

Start by forming your turkey-burgers. If you have a ‘burger-maker’ all well and good; if not, your hands are infinitely serviceable! Put your turkey mince (circa 1lb for 4 burgers) into a large mixing-bowl and season well. Finely chop a clove of garlic and a fresh chilli (including seeds if you like it hot), plus a good handful of fresh coriander leaves. Add these to the bowl, then crumble in a chicken stock cube and a teaspoonful of ground coriander seeds. Mix this all up ‘with commitment’, then form the mix into burger-shapes. The mixture should be coherent but loose throughout.

Place a wok or wide based pan onto a high heat and drizzle in some sunflower oil. Seal your burgers for a minute or two on each side until golden brown. Then lift them out and place onto a baking-tray whilst you prepare your rice. Take the wok off the heat, but keep it handy to cook the other ingredients in a few minutes.

Prepare your cauliflower rice by blitzing the florets in a food-processor (precise instructions can be found under a separate post by clicking the following hyperlink: cauliflower rice). Place this to one side and start chopping your rice-filling.

Finely slice a few rashers of smoked bacon and a small onion. Place your wok back onto the heat with a little more oil, then fry your bacon and onion until they start to colour. Crush in a couple of cloves of garlic, then follow this with as much chopped chilli as you can bear (I used x2 with seeds).

At this point, transfer your burgers to a hot oven, then continue to chop the other ingredients.

The exact filling for the rice is entirely up to you, and whatever vegetables you have to hand in the fridge. I used a stick of celery, a few mushrooms, half a leek and a bit of pepper. Slice these finely, then add to the wok and stir well. Tip in your rice, crumble in another chicken stock cube, and continue to sauté the lot on a medium heat for five minutes.

Whilst the rice is cooking, break four eggs into a bowl and whisk smooth. Now return to your wok and scrape the rice into a pile on one side. In the space you have cleared, drizzle in a little more oil then pour in the egg. Don’t stir it for a minute – we want to form autonomous clumps of egg. Only stir when the mixture in contact with the pan’s surface has had time to cook through. Then continue as per scrambled eggs. The reason you do it this way is to prevent the liquid egg from coating the rice and turning into an unattractive mess! If you simply poured the egg over the contents of the pan without clearing a space and cooking separately you’d just end up with a porridge-like mix, with no discernible clusters of egg – if this occurs, you may just as well not have bothered!

Finally, squeeze over the juice of half a lime to ‘lift’ the flavour, then scatter on a handful of chopped coriander to garnish. Remove your burgers from the oven and serve alongside the rice, accompanied by generous lashings of herby garlic-mayonnaise. In short – divine!

Browse this and other recipes by picture on my pinterest page: country walks in ketosis pinterest.

Thanks for reading and bon ap!

Adam.