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There’s a lot of misinformation and out and out lies floating around out there about burgers. Thin patties cook faster(they just overcook faster), lean meat is healthier(nothing healthy about a crumbly burger) and that mixing ketchup into the patty does anything but suck.

So in order to clear up the crap I hereby present to you the rules for making a bad ass burger:

1. Don’t fuck with it. This is the hardest one for people to follow. If you people feel like kneading something make bread. Over mixing ground beef just gives you tough burgers. Mix it very little and make the patties very loose.
2. I said don’t fuck with it. Put the patties on the grill and don’t touch. Don’t keep flipping them, don’t move them from a hot spot to a cool spot and for the love of God don’t press down on them. If I ever catch you pressing down on a burger while it cooks I will kill you with your own spatula.Put the patties on the grill, close the grill, wait 4 minutes(on high) and flip them once. Put cheese on at this point and then close the grill for another 4 minutes. That’s it!If you’re cooking inside you can put a metal bowl over the top of the pan.
3. The purists have a point. I don’t agree with the whole “A burger should be pure beef only” mentality, but the zealots are right about some things. With burger recipes there is a tendency to mix in more and more crap until you’re basically grilling meatloaf, and that’s not cool. So keep the mixins to a minimum, make sure they are cooked before hand and are at least room temperature so the burger cooks evenly. And never, ever put pure cheese in the middle. You’ll end up with super hot oil and cheese curd floating around in the middle of your hamburger. Not cool.
4. Do not fear the fat. I’m amazed and how hard it is for people to learn this lesson. If you’re a fat phobe then just stay away from burgers. Ideally your meat should be 80/20, that’s 80 percent leand and 20 percent fat. Any less and the burger won’t hold together. If all you have is 85/15 then you can, just this once, mix in a tablespoon of vegetable oil for every pound of beef. But you have to admit to everyone who eats at your house that you’re a douche.
5. Season well but don’t spice. Or at least not unless you intend to. The thing about salt and pepper is that in the right amounts they bring out flavors but you don’t taste theirs. That’s seasoning. I go with a half teaspoon each per pound of beef, mixed in to the patties.
6. You can’t have bad ass burgers without bad ass patties. That means you under mix, season and gently form your 6 ounce patties about a half hour before cooking so they can reach room temperature. They should be a little round so you can lightly flatten them(not smash) just before cooking. And don’t forget to make an indent with your thumb as you put them on the grill, this will stop that “burger shaped like a baseball” problem that sometimes creeps up on you.
7. Rolls matter. A good burger on wonderbread is like a Ferrari rolling on doughnuts. Get fresh baked rolls(I prefer potato) and toast them lightly before eating. I also recommend a thin layer of mayonnaise on each side of the roll as this will prevent soakage and, when it mixes with the hamburger juices, it creates nature’s perfect sauce. Just stay light on the mayo, you shouldn’t be able to taste it on it’s own.

So there you have it, the 7 rules to a bad ass burger. Follow them and a world of perfect summer grilling is yours. Break them and you’ll be cursed to an eternity of wishing you had gone to McDonalds(a fate worse than death).

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• Previous: The History of The Hamburger
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I like to think I’m immune to the bullshit. That the hype doesn’t get to me like the rest of you animals. I don’t believe sharks are hunting people for that week every year when there’s no news so they report some ungodly number of shark attacks. I don’t live my life in fear of what plastics ‘might’ be doing to my brain chemistry. And I’ve never once been shocked or disgusted to find out the bacteria counts on a dollar bill. I don’t fall for the media spin.

And yet when I read that 300 people had gotten sick from salmonella infected tomatoes I thought “Oh shit, no salsa tonight.” I mean, 300 is a lot right? And salmonella is most likely caused by human fecal matter. I guess someone hated to waste fertilizer.

So I thought that I should help everyone out during this epidemic. In order to prevent mass riots I would create a map showing who was living in the danger zone. That way those people could evacuate to tomato safe houses where councilors would be available.

So here’s the map I came up with:

View Larger Map

Blue areas are clean, red is suspect and orange means that certain counties are OK(damn google maps won’t show county lines so I couldn’t break Florida down any further). Notice anything? 50% of the country is clean as a whistle, 49% haven’t been cleared but that’s because the FDA is so unworried about tomatoes from Michigan and  whatnot they’re not even bothering to check them and in the one state that may have  been a source for infected tomatoes over 30% of  the counties have been cleared. And it’s entirely possible Mexico is really clean as well, it’s just convenient to blame them.

Quite frankly there’s more salmonella swirling  in my toilette bowl on a daily basis then there is in our tomato supply, why no news story about that? I’ll tell you why, nobody’s scared of my toilette(they should be). But they’re terrified of the food supply. Mostly because they’re so separated from it they have no idea how it works.

The media can create tomatophobia in most people because they have no idea where their tomatoes come from. As I’ve discussed previously, most tomatoes are gassed into a false ripeness and shipped across country to the highest bidder. Not to be all uppity, but those of us who buy from farmers markets or local produce stores know exactly where our food is coming from and don’t have a reason to get caught up in the fear cycle(even though I did).

Sure, food born illness is important but let’s not let the media tie our panites in a wad for us. 300 people have gotten sick from tomatoes, but in the time how many millions of people have eaten tomatoes? 10 million? 30 million?  One in a few hundred thousand doesn’t sound like scary odds to me, let’s not let the hype of a tomato recal ruin our perspective

Ah, the noble hamburger. Where does it’s greatness come from? From the pride of reusing meat from the butcher shop floor? From the bravery of a food that cannot be less than 15% fat? No, I think the greatness that is hamburger comes from it’s overwhelming simplicity. Nothing fancy, nothing overwhelming. Just some meat on a bun, maybe a few vegetables across the top for the sake of irony.

Beautiful.

But for all it’s simple glory the hamburger is not without depth. Which is why I’m doing this series on hamburgers. We’ll look at some tips, talk about why you want to make your own(Hint: In America it’s fucking illegal to sell you a medium rare burger) and I just may give you a peek at my world famous veggie burger recipe.

photo credit: justgrimes
But first how about a little history of this ground wonder. There are many legends around the origin of the hamburger. Some say that Odin once smacked Thor so hard that he bled hamburgers for days. Odin quite liked them, and developed the habit of beating Thor mercilessly whenever he was hungry. Others say the hamburger was a gift to the third Japanese emperor from a royal house trying to curry his favor. He immediately jailed the lot of them and had their holdings burned to the ground on the charge of witchcraft.

I believe another tale. The Mongols spend years riding roughshod over Asia and lived on horseback. They were known to keep tough cuts of meat under their saddles to pulverized it until it was edible. When the Mongols took their domination party to Russia they brought this meat with them, and the Russians made Steak Tar Tar out of it. Sailors brought it back to the port town of Hamburg Germany where diced meat(now using knives instead of a saddle, horse skin and butt force) was cooked and called a Hamburg Steak.

Naturally the German immigrants brought their food with them to America. But there things get fuzzy again.

The Menches Brothers claim their great grandfather invented the burger as we know it, ground beef patty on a bun. They were running a sausage booth at a fair in Hamburg, New York around 1885 and ran out of sausage(a critical error in sausage booth management). In a panic they fried the ground beef they had with every spice available(including coffee) just to have something to sell and when a customer asked what it was they called it a Hamburger on the fly.

However Louis Lassen claimed that in 1900 a young man ran into his luncheonette and wanted something he could eat on the go and quick. Louis pulled some Hamburg style steak out of the broiler and wrapped it in bread. There is one reason this version may be the true origin of the hamburger. Who would make up such a boring story?

The third contender is “Hamburger Charlie” Nagreen who in 1870 couldn’t seem sell his meatballs at a fair in Seymor, Wisconson(A common problem). So he figured if people could still walk around the fair with the food, they’d be more interested. He mashed one of the meat balls between two buns and Charlie went on to make a fourtune(in terms of 1870 Seymor, Wisconsin). Personally, I tend to believe this story. I mean, he has hamburger right in his name, they don’t just give that do you. You have to earn it.

Now that we know the anthropological origins of the Hamburger(always vital for cooking) we can get down to how you can build a better one. Next time.

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• Click Here For The Whole Series
• Next: Bad Ass Burgers Every Time

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Kait over at Kait’s Plate had this sugestion concerning my gravy woes:

I used to make gravy with cornstarch, but when I’d heat up the leftovers it ended up looking like gravy jelly. Not appetizing. Gravy is not supposed to hold its shape like that. Now I make it with a roux instead and it heats up better.

Pointless misspelling of common names asside, she has a point. A roux, for those of you who don’t know, is a mixture of flour and fat. You usually melt some butter in a pan and vigorously beat in a few tablespoons of flour, or if you’re making gravy you can just use the fat in the pan of what you’re cooking.

The nice thing about making a roux before you add the liquid to make the gravy is that you can control how “thick” the gravy is. The more you cook the roux the darker it gets(and the stronger the flavor). The darker the roux the less thickening power it has.

So if I took the exact same gravy recipe I was using, poured about 3 tablespoons of the fat into another pan and then slowly whisked in 3 tablespoons of flower, I’d have a roux. If I let that roux cook until it starts to get dark it will make a more fluid gravy when I add it back to the first pan which will reheat better the next day.

Good looking out Kait. And good looking too

photo credit: thebittenword.com
I made a batch chicken fried steak the other day and like most chicken fried steaks, it was a bit bland. Luckily chicken fried steak makes a great gravy that you can use to cover it’s own shortcomings. Kind of like an ugly chick who brings her own beer(think about it).

So I made this gravy and it was fine until I got this strange sensation. I called my doctor who explained to me that I was full. I’d never experienced such a thing but apparently 3 fried steaks is about the human limit. So I packed up the rest with the gravy and threw it in the fridge. Of course I got it out for breakfast the next morning and since I was feeling abysmally lazy I threw the whole kit in the microwave.

About 2 minutes later I had warm steaks and cold gravy :/ About 2 minutes after that I had chicken fried hockey pucks and cold gravy About 2 minutes after that I had cereal.

photo credit: ManHole.ca

It makes sense when I think about it, I just hadn’t at the time. I’m not a clear thinker before my first feeding. It comes down to what gravy is made up of:

• fat
• burned flesh
• some boiled off liquid
• some thickening agent

Now think about how a microwave works. It generates microwaves which bounce off water and generate friction which generates heat. That’s why you can put plastic in the microwave, no water == no heat.

Now you would think that the liquid in gravy would allow you to heat it in the microwave, but the problem is there’s very little water in there. I got about half a cup of gravy and I know I put 2 cups of chicken broth in there. So the fat, liquid and thickening agent(cornstarch) all added up to a half cup. Not much room for water in there, and the water that was there was tied up in the cornstarch.

photo credit: KB35

Maybe if I had put the gravy in there by itself and let it go for a while it would have worked. Or maybe mixing a little water in with it could have heated it up (although it definitely would have been gross). But I think next time I’ll just wrap the kit in tinfoil and heat it in the toaster oven. It’ll take 10 more minutes but I won’t end up eating cereal.