Venison burgers with Guinness caramelised onions

One of the advantages of living close to the centre of Edinburgh is that we have easy access to the weekly farmers' market: http://www.edinburghfarmersmarket.co.uk/
A wander around yesterday morning resulted in a haul of goodies, including a pack of venison burgers as well as some great German rye bread and a really interesting blue cheese from the Isle of Arran. After some discussion, we decided to keep the recipe fairly plain in order to let the natural flavour of the venison come through. however, every good burger deserves a topping, hence the caramelised onions.

Ingredients:
pre-made venison burgers
red onions
Guinness
morning rolls

I decided to use red onions here because I think they have a more mellow flavour than white onions and would compliment the venison. However, white or yellow onions would work just as well. In order to get the onions really sticky and sweet, I gave them a long, slow cook. After cutting them in half and slicing lengthwise, I then heated a little olive oil in a saucepan and added the onions:

To this I then added a hearty glug of Guinness to add an extra depth of flavour from the malt to the natural sugars in the onions, seen below in the beautiful setting of my kitchen:

Once added to the onions, I turned the heat up hight to let the alcohol boil off and keep the sugars and flavour of the beer. Although the picture may look like a lot of onions, they reduced a lot during the cooking process.

Next it was time to cook the burgers. The ones we had came from a farmer in the Scottish borders, called Seriously Good Venison. As the people at the farmers' market sell their own produce, it is much easier to check the provenance and ask questions about how the animals are reared than it is buying in a supermarket. The whitish flecks which you can see in the burgers are oatmeal to help them bind together properly.

Although venison is naturally low in fat and requires the addition of another meat, such as pork, to ensure that it is properly bound together, I decided to grill the burgers rather than frying them. Again, this decision was based both upon a wish to lower the fat content of the meat and to maintain flavour without the addition of cooking oil.

To cook the burgers, I set the oven to the grill function and pre-heated it to 250 degrees Centigrade. Once they were under the grill I set a timer for 12 minutes, flipping them half way through the cooking time. While they were cooking I sliced open the morning rolls. After the cooking time was up and having checked that the burgers were cooked all the way through, I placed two onto each roll and topped them with the onions which had cooked down and become coated in the Guinness. The final picture shows the finished product.