Gordon Ramsay’s chicken burger is 350g of chicken breast mince with sweated onion, garlic, fresh herbs and an egg, chilled for an hour until the mix firms up, then fried for 4 minutes each side until golden. It makes 6 small burgers in wholemeal buns with avocado and tomato, and the whole thing takes about 90 minutes with the chill.
This is his chicken burger with sweet potato wedges from the Healthy Appetite book, and I’ve made it more times than any other burger on this site. The trick is in the sweat: the onion and garlic cook gently for 6 minutes before they go anywhere near the raw mince, so there’s no sharp bite in the patty, just a soft sweetness running through it. He calls it a low-fat burger and chips, but it doesn’t eat like health food.
His one warning, and he puts it in italics in the book: “don’t press them with a spatula as they cook or you’ll squeeze out the juices.” Chicken mince is much leaner than beef, so there’s less fat to spare. The egg and the hour-long chill do the structural work, but the moisture only survives if you leave the patties alone in the pan.
Gordon Ramsay Chicken Burger Recipe (Healthy Appetite)
Course: DinnerCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy6
15
minutes15
minutes380
kcal1 hr 30 min
His lighter burger from the Healthy Appetite book: chicken breast mince with sweated onion, garlic and fresh herbs, bound with an egg, chilled for an hour, then fried golden and served in wholemeal buns with avocado, tomato and sweet potato wedges on the side. Six small burgers that don’t taste like a compromise.
Ingredients
- For the burgers:
3 tbsp olive oil
1 medium sweet onion, peeled and finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely crushed
350g minced skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1 large egg
Handful of flat-leaf parsley and chives, chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- For the sweet potato wedges:
3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
Olive oil, to drizzle
Honey, to drizzle (optional)
- To serve:
6 mini buns, preferably wholemeal, split and toasted
1 large ripe avocado, sliced
Squeeze of lemon juice
1 large beef tomato, thinly sliced
Directions
- Sweat the onion and garlic: Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a pan and cook the onion and garlic with a pinch of salt for 4 to 6 minutes until soft but not brown. Tip into a large bowl and leave to cool completely, because warm onion starts cooking the raw chicken when you mix them.
- Mix and chill for an hour: Add the chicken mince, egg, herbs and seasoning to the cooled onion. Stir until everything is evenly combined, then cover with cling film and chill for an hour. The mixture is too soft to shape without this step.
- Shape gently with wet hands: Divide into 6 small patties on a parchment-lined tray. Wet your hands first, and don’t compact them. They should feel loose. Chill again until you’re ready to cook.
- Bake the wedges: Preheat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Cut the sweet potatoes into wedges, toss in olive oil and seasoning, spread on a lined tray and bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden at the edges. Drizzle with honey if you like.
- Fry the patties: Heat 2 tbsp olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add the patties and fry for 4 minutes each side until golden brown and cooked through. Do not press them with a spatula or you’ll lose the juices. Rest them on a warm plate for a minute.
- Toast and build: Lightly toast the buns on both sides. Slice the avocado thinly and squeeze lemon juice over it. Build each bun with a patty, avocado, tomato and serve with the wedges.
FAQs
Why cool the onion before mixing it with the chicken?
Because warm onion starts cooking raw chicken mince the moment they touch. Even slightly warm alliums change the texture of the surface, making the finished patty grainy rather than smooth. His method is specific: sweat them, tip them into the bowl, leave to cool completely. The wait matters.
It also gives the onion a chance to turn sweet. Raw onion in a chicken burger hits you with sharp heat that fights the delicate mince instead of supporting it. Six minutes of gentle sweating changes it from an assault to a background flavour.
What’s the difference between this and his chicken sandwich?
Completely different recipe. His fried chicken sandwich from the Scrambled episode with Tom Holland uses whole chicken thighs, marinated in buttermilk, double-dredged in spiced flour and deep-fried until the crust shatters. This burger uses raw breast mince mixed with herbs and an egg, shaped into patties and pan-fried.
If you want fried crunch, make his sandwich. If you want something lighter that the whole family will eat, this is it.
Can you use chicken thigh mince instead of breast?
You can, and it’ll be juicier, since thigh carries more fat. The trade-off is that the patties hold together almost too well, because thigh mince is stickier, so they can turn dense if you overwork them. He specifies breast in the Healthy Appetite book, which fits the lighter angle.
His turkey thigh burger does the thigh-mince version properly, with Worcestershire and lemon zest doing the flavour work that parsley and chives do here. Different birds, same family.
Why an hour of chilling, not less?
Because chicken breast mince is wet. Beef mince holds its shape from the fat, but chicken breast at 2% fat has nothing binding it except the egg and the starch from the breadless mix, so it needs the full hour for the proteins to set and the moisture to redistribute.
If you try shaping patties after 20 minutes, they’ll stick to your hands and spread flat in the pan. After an hour they’re firm enough to flip confidently. His Make It Easy salmon fish cakes use the same logic: two separate chills to firm a wet mix.
What are the Hellfire Chicken Wings at his restaurants?
They’re wings, not a burger, despite the name floating around online. His Gordon Ramsay Burger restaurants in Vegas, Boston and Chicago serve Hellfire Chicken Wings as a starter, tossed in his own hellfire sauce. Good wings by all accounts, but they’re a bar snack, not a patty in a bun, and there’s no published recipe for them.
If you want heat in this chicken burger, a few dashes of hot sauce in the mayo before you spread it does the job without reinventing the patty.
What goes on the side besides the wedges?
The book says sweet potato wedges with optional honey, and they’re the right call since a lean burger needs a starchy side more than a fatty one does. His oven chips with smoked paprika are the potato alternative if you’d rather keep things simple, and they bake at the same temperature.
The whole burger lineup sits in the burger recipes roundup if you want to compare before committing.
