Melting Middle Pork & Apple burgers

Sorry, my WW recipes have slipped over the past couple of weeks. I had a huge backlog when I started posting them so scheduled loads and it took me by surprise when they ran out! I'm back now, promise. With loads more!

Anyway, I've been really fancying two things since starting Weight Watchers - chips, and burgers. Not necessarily together, but definitely both. The thing is that when I'm eating out, I know that neither option is going to be WW-friendly and it's rare for me to have either at home. In the end though, that was how I gave in - I found out a few weeks ago that the fresh chips from M&S are just 4PP per 1/2 pack. They were SO tasty and completely satisfied my craving for PROPER chips! But this post isn't about the chips, it's about the burger.

It's a Saturday night tradition now for my best friend Sha and I to experiment with a Weight Watchers recipe (whilst gossiping in front of the telly, of course). We found this pork burger recipe on the Weight Watchers website here, but ended up changing it into something entirely different - including adding a melting cheese centre for only 1 extra propoint!

This recipe makes 4 servings - we actually only made 3 burgers with the ingredients as there were only 3 of us there. But they were HUGE, as you can see. We didn't even need a side course!

Melting Middle Pork & Apple burgers

500g Extra Lean Pork Mince (5% fat), raw - 19PP

1 tbsp Sweet Chilli Sauce - 1PP

1 egg - 2PP

4 Ciabatta Rolls - 24PP

4 Babybel Light - 4PP

120g Low Fat Cheese - 8PP

4 tbsp Caramelised Onion Chutney - 4PP

4 tsp Mayonnaise - 4PP

1 tsp Mixed Herbs - 0PP

1 tsp Cumin - 0PP

1/2 Onion - 0PP

1 Cooking Apple - 0PP

Salt & Pepper to season - 0PP

Salad, to serve

= 42PP (11PP per Serving - 14PP if you make 3)

To reduce points: Use lower PP bread or miss out the bread, leave out the mayo or onion chutney, don't have cheese on top.

1 - Finely chop or grate the onion and cooking apple into a large bowl
2 - Add the minced pork, egg, cumin, herbs, sweet chilli and salt & pepper, and mix together (using your hands is the most effective way, messy!). Use plenty of seasoning - you can't test these obviously until they are cooked, but as they are quite thick they risk being under salt so be relatively liberal.
3 - Split the mince mixture equally into 4.
4 - Unwrap the Babybels and shape each portion of the mince mixture into a burger around each Babybel
5 - Oven cook the burgers on a baking tray at 190c for about 30 minutes or until you're satisfied they're done. Warning - they're quite oozy, so you might not want to use a flat baking tray!
6 - Add 30g of low fat cheese to the top of each burger and pop back in the oven until melted.
7 - Serve in your Ciabatta rolls with the mayo, caramelised onion and salad. SO TASTY.

Babybel in the middle of burgers was genius! It holds together really well, but still melts in the middle. We really enjoyed these, but we feel like we could fine tune them and improve them in the future. I've also found a recipe for 0PP caramelised onion chutney so am definitely going to cook up a batch of that soon! I also think these would be amazing with apple sauce. Watch this space for more burger attempts!