Dr. Axe: Hi, I'm Dr. Josh Axe and welcome to my kitchen.
This week we have a special guest, Jonathan Martin, who's a personal trainer and owner
of Fitness Link which is a whole body fitness system that's working to get people healthier
in their entire bodies.
Today he's got a great recipe for us called Lamb Sliders.
He's going to walk us through exactly what he's doing, and I'm going to talk about a
lot of the nutritional benefits of lamb and a lot of the spices and different seasonings
that are in the recipe.
Jonathan, welcome to the show.
Jonathan: Thank you very much.
Dr. Axe: I'm glad you could be here.
Jonathan: Great to be here.
This is an easy recipe and it's so much fun to make.
Anybody can do it.
What we're going to be doing here is making what I call Lamb Sliders.
We're going to use some ground lamb, we're going to fill with some seasonings, and we're
going to have a topping all made out of vegetables.
So we're going to roast some of these, we're going to cook some of it, and we're going
to start off and I'll show you how to do it.
First, this is a pound of ground lamb here and I'm going to toss about three cloves of
chopped garlic in there, and then I'm going to put a little Himalayan sea salt.
Everything's about a teaspoon or so, paprika, some black pepper, turmeric, and some cumin.
Dr. Axe: Okay.
Before Jonathan goes on I'm going to take a minute and just kind of walk through a lot
of the health benefits of this recipe.
Number one, lamb is a great type of meat if it's grass-fed.
Now, a lot of lamb is, some of it isn't, so you may want to ask that at your local supermarket.
But again, lamb that is grass-fed, it's going to be high in those omega-3-fatty acids.
Also, a great source of protein.
The other things that he added in here, one was garlic and garlic has allicin which is
a natural antiviral, bacterial.
It's even been shown to help fight cancer.
Garlic is also great for anti-aging so it's really a good thing from this recipe.
Paprika is very high in antioxidants.
It's going to help your body fight free radical damage.
Now he's using Himalayan rock salt, which is similar to actually even Celtic sea salt.
It's very, very high in trace minerals so it's actually good for your body.
One more thing.
He's using black pepper, also high in antioxidants.
The turmeric is the number one food source you can eat for reducing inflammation, and
so it's going to help out reversing inflammation in your arteries, it's going to help with
heart disease, reduce inflammation in your joints so it will help out with joint pain,
and just really a numerous amount of other things helped with the turmeric.
And the last thing there is the cumin, also high in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory.
So this is making us a really, really nutritional recipe.
Jonathan: Awesome, and it tastes good, too.
Dr. Axe: That's a point.
Jonathan: What we're going to do here is just take apart a couple of these and make about
four patties or so.
Place them in the pan here and we're going to let these cook for about eight minutes
or so before we flip them.
While those are cooking I'm going to start our topping, which is fennel and red onion
and some Serrano pepper.
Dr. Axe: Jonathan, is this a recipe where you put oil in the pan or no oil?
Jonathan: The thing about lamb is it has enough of its own healthy fat in it that it greases
the pan on its own.
Dr. Axe: Okay, great.
Jonathan: So we don't have to add any fat to it at all.
All right, next what we're going to do is chop up the red onion and the fennel for the
topping of the Lamb Sliders.
So we're going to go ahead and do that now.
Dr. Axe: Some of the health benefits of onion are it actually has allicin similar to garlic
so it's a natural antifungal, bacterial.
It's going to help kill off any of that bad stuff in your system.
Also, it contains sulfur which is a natural detoxification agent.
Sulfur will actually go through your arteries, start pulling out plaque, bind to toxins in
your system and pull them out.
So again, onions are great for detoxification and for boosting your immune system.
The other thing we're looking at here is fennel, and fennel is kind of a relative to licorice
and it has some of the similar benefits.
Actually, fennel is great for digestion.
It's used in a lot of infants who have colic or people who have acid reflux and so it's
good for digestion.
Also, it's been shown to help women who aren't lactating enough and so it's good for pregnant
women.
The last thing, it's also good for antioxidant purposes and it's actually been shown to help
out with glaucoma and actually improve eyesight.
Jonathan: It does have that licorice scent to it as well.
It goes really well together with red onion and it goes really well with lamb.
Now we're just dicing this up and then we're going to roast it for again about eight minutes.
So what I'm going to do is toss this in a dish here, so we put it all in here and again,
we're going to put this in the oven and let it roast just for about eight, maybe ten minutes.
And that's on 375, by the way.
Okay, so these have been cooking for about five to eight minutes now and we're going
to go ahead and flip them.
I'm getting hungry.
It looks delicious.
And then we have one more ingredient to add to this and that is a single Serrano pepper.
Now this is optional.
If you like spicy things, you can add it.
If not . . . and I'm going to add this directly to the pan here and let the oil from the meat
absorb into the pepper and let the seasoning from the pepper help the flavor.
All right, so let's sprinkle it all in here and let that just mix in there.
This is going to cook again for another about five to eight minutes, and by the time this
is done, our vegetables will be done inside as well.
Dr. Axe: Well, the burgers are almost cooked, and it's a good thing because I'm starving
right now and ready to eat.
So Jonathan is going to kind of walk us through the final stages of the Lamb Sliders.
Jonathan: All right.
So it's been about 10 minutes total time here for cooking and we're ready to just set it
up on the plate now.
Our burgers are done.
I'm going to go and shut this off.
Only had to flip it once.
Our onion and fennel should be done roasting so I'm going to pull that out.
Now another option here is you can throw this
in a processer and blend it up, and it makes it a little more fine, or you can finely dice
it.
It's up to you.
Today we're just dicing.
We're not putting it in a processor.
We're going to set up our meal here now.
We're going to get our burgers and make sure we get some of those Serrano peppers as well.
Then we're just going to take a little bit of our onion and fennel mix here and we're
just going to top it.
Just like that.
Dr. Axe: This looks pretty good.
Is it ready to eat yet?
Jonathan: It's ready to eat.
Actually, I made a side salad for this as well so I'll go and grab that.
Dr. Axe: We didn't talk about the benefits of the peppers in there, but peppers are great
for actually boosting your metabolism.
So if you're a person who's looking to lose weight and actually increase your energy levels,
peppers are awesome for both of those things.
Jonathan: Awesome.
So what I made here is a simple quinoa salad with cucumber and tomato and avocado, a little
bit of lemon juice squeezed on it.
The last thing I'm going to do is put a little bit of this cumin on it.
Just sprinkle that on.
So there is the dish, absolutely delicious.
Doesn't even take too long to make it and then we're going to enjoy it.
Ready to go.
Dr. Axe: Awesome.
I look forward to eating that.
Thanks, Jonathan.
I appreciate it.
Jonathan: My pleasure.
Dr. Axe: Great.