One of the authors at this site thinks that if you don’t like burgers, you must not be American, and so proceeds to give a recipe for a “chicken burger”.  Let’s call a spade a spade; what he meant to name it was a chicken slurry slug with all sorts spices and accessories.   Palatable though it may become with all those ancillary flavorants, it is kind of like a gold ring in a swine’s snout: a sandwich without discretion.  So with Proverbs on my side, I’m here to tell you that if it isn’t beef, it isn’t a burger.

Now I will point out truth where I see it and whole heartily agree that a crucial element of a true burger is the bread that it contains.  In fact there are two things that make up the definition of a burger: ground beef patty and bread.  Anything else is extra, and anything less is either toast or meat loaf, or worse.  So with this in mind, here is what I consider the best burger:

1) Thick juicy meat made from freshly ground BEEF.

2) Bread that is tasty enough to stand on its own.

To address point number one, you can go ahead and generally follow Dan’s chicken slurry slug recipe, using beef instead but without the peppers or hot sauce or whatever else would cover up the taste of the beef too much.  When I made this burger I used some bread crumbs, one egg, various spices (left over dry rub from ribs, if you must know), and fresh oregano leaves.  Lightly formed it into a patty, and fried it on a cast iron skillet. (Sliding it into a 450 degree oven when I flipped it over so that it would cook more being that is was so thick.)

To address the second point, one of my favorite breads is the soft pretzel.  What then would make more sense then to use this for the bread in the burger?  Follow the recipe for pretzels here. Make either a bun out of the dough, or a pretzel that doesn’t have any holes.

So that’s it.  In this rendition I put provolone cheese and sauteed mushrooms, with some basil on top.  The basil wasn’t that good, so it came off after a few bites.  I would have really like some blue cheese, bacon, lettuce and mushrooms, but I’ll save that for next time.

Let me know what you think!

–Timothy

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 12:03 pm and is filed under American, Bread (Yeast), Dinner, Lunch, Meat, blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.