Hamburgers 101

Fran (the gardner) and I discovered the burger joint 5 Guys last summer and fell in love with it. The burgers were pretty good, but the fries were heavenly. They were too good. Out of this world good. So we had to stop going. It's been about 6 months since I've had a hamburger and I needed a fix. Yesterday I discovered a site on the internet that's all about burgers and decided to follow Brian's tips on making the Basic Burger. Since we're cooking our burgers medium to well done these days, a few extra ingredients seem to be necessary to keep the meat moist, juicy and flavorful. Here's Brian's recipe.


The Basic Burger

1 pound ground beef
1/2 onion grated
4 pinches of ground coriander
4 pinches ground paprika
fresh ground black pepper (I used 1/4 tsp)
salt (I used 1/2 tsp)
1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs (I used one slice of Italian bread ground in my spice mill)
1 egg slightly beaten
1 quarter beef bouillion cube dissolved in 2-3 T water (I don't keep this in my pantry, so I used 1/2 tsp of the seasoning packet from Near East Rice Pilaf mix)


And I finally got to use these little measuring spoons that I received as a give-away from a now defunct cooking club.

Mix all ingredients together and form into 4 pattys. Since I didn't have any hamburger buns I decided to grill a pita bread and serve myself an open-faced burger salad sandwich. I heated the grill pan to high and waited for some grill marks to appear before I turned the bread over.

Then I lowered the heat to medium (Brian's instructions), sprayed the pan with cooking spray and added my burger. I cooked it 4 minutes on each side.

To my pita bread I added some Bibb lettuce, mayo, ketchup and mustard and waited for the burger to be done.

And then a few pickles made their way to the party and dinner was served.

I must say, this was delicious. And filling. And I didn't miss the fries. Hah! Who am I kidding? Fries would have been great, but I was not going to attempt to make perfect fries when I'd already made the perfect burger.