Burger Thursday

I realize it is not yet Thursday, but I feel like the people deserve enough time to reflect on and prepare for this recipe, in order to fully celebrate the joy that is...Burger Thursday.

I am experiencing one of those periods of transition that I fear will end up in a complete apple cart turnover. I don’t much care for upheaval. Unless we talking bout heavin’ up a spoonful of cobbler into my face, and then I am all for it. Preferably, I am a creature of habit. These habits are frequently fleeting and mismanaged, but some, like Burger Thursday, are just not to be fucked with. In my house, Burger Thursday, like Taco Monday, has a special place of reverence in the weekday schedule. When you come home to find a bad-ass burger on your plate at dinnertime, you know it's Thursday and the week is almost over and it’s only one more shitting day of going to work before it’s all weekendy and great again. I have been participating in Burger Thursday for approximately 15 months now, which, if one were to do the math, one would discover I have prepared, cooked, and eaten a literal shit-ton of burgers. I have tweaked and explored and started over from scratch about a billion times, and I think I have perfected my beef burger, which I will now share with your lucky, lucky asses. Some might say that this burg is overdressed. Some, over seasoned. It is possible that both of these things are true. However, this burger still balls out of control and I am both pleased and proud to share it with you, the unwashed masses. Time to Burg Out.

Sweet Dreams are made of These.

A note about the most special ingredient in the world: Several months ago, I was turned on to what is now one of my favorite ingredients with which to cook, ever – roasted green chiles from New Mexico. Yes, Ortega makes roasted green chiles that come diced in a blue can, but it’s the difference between Black Truffle cheese and Velveeta slices, which I shouldn’t have to tell you, is seriously significant. The thing that sucks about these delicious New Mexican green chiles, is that you have to buy them in bulk and the shipping costs are so high as to be almost preventative. My suggestion, is I guess to cop out and look for the Ortega chiles, or else suck it up and find somebody close to your home to split a case with you. I split a case, which gives me 6 jars of roasted green chiles to be used in almost any food that will sit still long enough for me to throw chiles on it. Also, I don’t shill for no man, but I do not mind from time to time sharing with you when I find an exceptional foods or company or vendor or piece of equipment. I recently re-upped my supply of green chiles and the particular company I buy from quoted me a price for product and shipping, upon which we both agreed, and payment was made and chiles was shipped. Shortly thereafter, I received an email from the chile company letting me know that, as it turned out, they ended up spending less on the shipping than they quoted me, so they just wanted to casually mention that they refunded the difference to mine credit card.

In Santa Fe, Hot = Extra Hot, Medium = Hot, Mild = Tourist.

Ladies and gentlemen, that shit just don’t ever happen. A conscientious capitalist. So now I am a big fan for life, not only of this company's products, but of their practices and I can without the slightest hesitation, whole-heartedly recommend these dudes and their freaking amazing green chiles. So, jump on over to www.SantaFeOleFoodCo.com and hit up some Original Medium Roasted New Mexico Green Chile. Trust me, six jars won’t hardly be enough. And “medium” is a little off the mark – them shits is hot. O snap, I just looked on their “where to buy” tab, and it would seem that some Albertsons’ and Whole Foods carry their line?! Well, Blow Me Down.

Now with extra bludgeoning power!

Shizz Besides the Basics:
I use a cast iron grill pan which I think I purchased quite economically from World Market several years ago. An outdoor grill or a frying pan would be just aces as well, I am sure.






Ingredients (for two burgs):
Patties:
½ pound of ground beef (I use the 93/7 because I am trying to watch my girlish figure)

~1/4 cup finely chopped onion (yellow or white, although shallots are divine here)

~2 teaspoons wheat germ

~1 heaping tablespoon of horseradish mustard

Coupla 3 or 4 big splashes of Worcestershire sauce

½ of a chipotle chili in adobo sauce, diced

Tony Chachere’s Spice N’ Herbs Seasoning, to taste

Toppings:
Sliced Tomato

Sliced avocado (1/4 per burg)

Red Leaf Lettuce

Sliced Mozzarella Cheese

Whole Wheat Buns

Dijon Mustard

1 smallish yellow onion, caramelized

Several heaping spoonfuls of Santa Fe Ole green chiles


Extras:
I always, always serve this burger with steamed broccoli and one serving of those Alexia Sweet Potato Fries, or the Alexia fries with the rosemary and olive oil. Or a little of both if I am having trouble making decisions in my life, which is often.

Order of Operations:
1. This whole process takes about an hour if you are caramelizing your onions professionally. It can take 25 minutes, if you are all like, nah forget dem onions. If you are not a chump, however, I encourage you to:

Slicing onions is a good way to mask your lack of emotion.

2. Set a large skillet over about a 4 flame and when it is hot, add about a tablespoon of olive oil and one skinny pat of butter. Slice your onion’s root and end off, and halve it, removing the skins and the root parts into your stock Ziploc. With your cut end down on your cutting board there, start making the skinniest slices you can without de-fingerizing yourself. Toss your onion slivers into your hot pan and stir them around to coat them in buttery awesomeness. After about 3 to 5 minutes, when they start getting limp and translucent (it happens to everybody), turn your heat down to like, seriously, 1 or 1 and a half. Now, there are some camps that say leave them alone entirely, and some that say stir very infrequently. I am of the latter camp because I can’t just leave shit alone, and my onions have suffered because of it. Caramelizing onions has always been a difficult process for me, and I still struggle with doing it correctly all the freaking time. Use the youtubes if you need real instruction. Or read a book, if you can still find one.

3. Additionally, beef cooks up better if it is at room temperature before you throw it on the heat. So, I take it out of the fridge and set it on the counter when I start up my onions. Let it get all warm and comfortable in its surroundings before I sneak attack it into tasteful submission.

4. Approximately half an hour before you wish to eat dinner, it will be time to start on your patties, etc. So until then, crack a beer, pet your dog, ask your honey how their day went. Everybody will be happy for the attention. They like you a lot.

5. If you are doing the store-bought oven-baked French fry thang, then go ahead and turn on your oven to 450 or whatever, and put your fries on their cookie sheet so when the pre-heat dinger dings you will already be Head of the Class. They usually take about 20 to 25 minutes to cook, so do your math backwards and plan appropriately.

6. OK, room temp ground beefy goes into your mixing bowl. Dice up your quarter onion or so into smaller than normal bits, but not like, pureed. Onion goes into the bowl.

More like Freedom's Mustard. Never forget.

7. Shake your bottle of horseradish mustard (French’s makes a fine one) and squeeze out a good heaping tablespoon or so right on top. Splash up your Worsheteseteschishire sauce.






 

Don't waste the seeds. Onanism is a sin.

8. Take one chipotle chile from the can of adobo and slice it in half. Now, chipotles in adobo are pretty great things and you should always have some on hand to go in soups or sauces, or to mix with butter and spread on a roasted ear of corn, ya heard me? They add a lot of smoky flave and a little heat and they make a burger cooked inside, over electricity, taste more like a burger cooked outside, over flames. Or technically, smoldering coals, but you get the picture. They can, however, overwhelm even the most robust of meals like the beef burger, so I use about 3/4ths the amount that I want to use. I dice half of a large chipotle and then use 3/4ths of what I cut. You can do mas o menos as you see fit.

This is the kind of germs you WANT to spread.

 9. Measure out a full tablespoon of wheat germ, or you can use bread crumbs, but wheat germs is good for you and really nutty and earthy and good tasting, whereas Progresso Italian Bread Crumbs – eh, not so much. Shake out about half of your tablespoon into your meat mix. You have to strike a balance between your wet and your dry. If you didn’t shake up your mustard, and you got a whole squirt of watery wet before you got your mustard, then maybe you want a little more wheat germ. Or if you were distracted by your fucking cat getting into some shit he KNOWS he is not supposed to be getting into and you put way too much wheat germ in it, well then I ‘spose you better be reaching for more of that mustard. You have probably made a burger before. You probably know how wet you like your burger. You probably understand that the wetter the burger, the more vulnerable the structural integrity of the patty, and the more likely you will lose burger content, upon the flipping of. You also probably know that you don’t want your burger so dry and crumbly that ya mamma’s vagina be eyein’ it with empathy, if you know whamsayin. Just add enough shit to make it work. You are probably gonna have some weird pieces of onion that want to creep out and misbehave, and that’s cool. It all comes out in the wash.

When handling meat, never forget to cup the balls.

10. You have in your bowl: your meat, wheat germ, chipotle, finely chopped onion, w. sauce, and mustard. Get your hands in there and squish. Blend it up and then divide into two equal halves and form each half into a patty, using your hands. Get your non-dominant thumb in there as a backstop and work your meatball into a flat disc, about most of an inch thick. You will know.

I do this to food in the store too.

11. Shape your patty, slap it down on your board, and poke your thumb directly in the center of it, making it as concave as your 14 year old chest was. This thumbprint will keep your burg from puffing up in the middle and ruining the perfectly flat surface on which to balance the crazy amount of shit you are fixing to stack upon and below it.

*burger gives thumbs up as it is lowered into vat of spices*

12. Once you have two fairly lean and ripply patties, grab hold of your Tony Chachere’s or similar blackening spices and give your burg a liberal dosing. This is where my burgs have come under fire. They can get a little salty on the backnote, because of dis right here. If you are averse to flavor, then omit this step, or only spice one side of your burg, or just use less, whatevs. But I like a spicy, flavory burg, so I double-side spice it.

Reminds me of the dating scene: fats and fruits.

13. Now turn on the heat under the cast iron grill pan to about 5 and let it heat up. During this time I let my burger patties rest and get used to their new shape, and I go about maybe stirring my caramelizin’ onions when I shouldn’t be, or slicing up tomatoes and washing off red lettuce leaves or slicing my avocado.




14. Once my grill pan is hot enough that the water I just flicked off my hand – both to check the temperature and also to antagonize my cat because it’s not fucking wet food time yet and I swear you are going to kill us both if you don’t get out from underfoot oh oops did I scare you with scary WATER?!? DID I?!? What a terrible tragedy for you, cat. You must really be upset and you should probably just go be by yourself for a little while and work it out and not be directly under the path of me and the hot-ass pan full of dripping burning beef fat that will surely kill me and you both, directly or indirectly, now or in the future – when those couple of drops of water hit that pan and immediately sizzle out of existence like not enough things do, well then it is time to cook ya damn burgah.

<Cheesy Caption Goes Here>

15. I like mine 4 minutes on one side, and then flip and slap the cheese on it, then 4 or maybe 5 more minutes, or until my cheese looks satisfactorily gooey. Whenever you deem your burg to be Done, remove it from the pan and allow it to rest for no less than 5 minutes. Excuse me, for no fewer than 5 minutes. If you use “less” there instead of “fewer” it is incorrect grammar. I am glad I was here to teach you that. O wow, speaking of teaching, I saw a parade this last weekend, and there was a float advertising a local private school and their banner was like, “St. Thomas: Spanish, Music, P.E.”. Seriously, how fucked up is it that the actual pull for the school is that they offer a fucking gym class. How is it that funding for public schools has been misappropriated and cut so fucking much, that now other schools merely offering music classes have a serious advantage? Why does this keep happening? I got mad at a parade.

The reception from this Broccoli Dish is better than DirectTV.

16. Now is a good time to get your broccoli steaming on.

Warm buns, hot potatoes.

17. Ok, pop your buns into your oven for no more than 4 minutes, and really only about 3, to get them as toasty as you pretended to be on prom night. When ya bunz is ready, take them over to your creation station and it is time to build the tower to Babylon.





18. Bottom bun gets slathered with a little Dijon. Next is half of your amazingly perfect-every-time caramelized onions. Then a generous layer of outrageous roasted green chiles.

 

Bacon: when one meat's not enough.

19. Then comes good ol’ burgah patty. Riiiiiiight on top.

20. One of us is having a piece of thick cut applewood smoked bacon, baked to crisp perfection, lovingly layered on top of the chiles. One of us is not.

The Tower of Burg-el. Oh, the foolish pride.

21. Next is the salad part. Tomatoes on the vine, sliced as thinly as I can manage, in a triple threat layer, slightly salt-and-peppered. Then rustle up your lettuce.

Market it as a "California Burger" by adding avocado.

22. Now, grab your quarter of thinly sliced avocado and deal it like cards onto your top bun. A little pressure from a butter knife can keep your avocado in place without squishing your awesome bread. Remove the fries and the broccoli from their respective heat sources, and put they asses on ya plate. I think we should all take a moment to reflect, on the magic that is happening right here, right now. It’s like we are watching the world wake up, from history.


23. Well folks, I don’t know what else to say but this: It is my best burger. It is the best one I can make and I hope you like it too.