When I was talking to the other half about what dishes he might fancy in our week of eating beef, he was pretty keen on making burgers.

If you’ve missed my previous posts this week – it’s Great British Beef Week and each night this week I’m cooking a different dish using our own beef. Some new recipes, some old favourites but all using different cuts of beef – except last night.

On Tuesday I cooked beef stuffed cabbage rolls with tomato sauce. Last night we used mince again but in a rather competitive burger-off.

I make burgers fairly frequently in the summer for barbecues and my go-to favourites are:

• Jalapeno cheeseburgers with a Worcestershire-coffee glaze, bacon and a side of spicy ranch sauce
• Roquefort burgers with cabernet reduction and a sweet cucumber relish
• Lamb burgers with Moroccan spices and orange salsa
• Chickpea and tahini burgers with hot pepper sauce

These might sound a bit exotic but boy, homemade burgers are so much tastier than shop-bought ones.

If you’re keen on barbecueing then the best recipe book I’ve found is The Grilling Book – all the recipes above are taken from there and in the summer it’s my barbecue bible.

Anyway, back to last night.

We were both allocated a section of the kitchen and a side of the cooker to prepare our own homemade burgers.

The rules were:

• It must use our own beef mince
• You must produce two identical burgers
• Any number of additional ingredients can be used
• They can be cooked inside or outside
• We toyed with the idea of an impartial judge but thought that was a step too far.

So it’s Saturday night and we find ourselves, pinnys on, furiously mixing meat, spices and condiments – the pressure really was on!

My recipe was homemade beef burger (using mince, onion, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, parsley and seasoning) with Stilton rarebit, rhubarb and beetroot ketchup and a brioche bun.

His recipe involved beef mince, worcesershire sauce, chilli, red onion, garlic and egg.

The end result was very complimentary. My burger was dense, slow cooked and rich with the addition of the rarebit. His was succulent, garlicky  and sticky. We agreed that they were both superb but the stand-out star of the show was definitely the beetroot and rhubarb ketchup (mind you the brioche buns turned out pretty well too!).

I’m always looking for new ways to use rhubarb and this will become a recipe that stands the test of time in our house.

The beetroot and rhubarb are combined with red wine vinegar, sugar, onion and ginger to make a sweet, slightly tart and very plummy ketchup that is calling out to be used with numerous other dishes.

Last night was a success and tonight I’ll be bringing our celebration of Great British Beef Week to a close with beef and ale pie.