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Food Friday -- Burgers and Fries
Now that we have half a cow living in our basement, we also have a whole lotta hamburger. We decided to start making a dent in that part of our freezer last night with a menu of burgers and sweet potato fries. These, however, were no ordinary members of their genus and species, my friends. These were hamburgo superious and
Many places using high-quality hamburger (inasmuch as that adjective applies) tout "no fillers," but I decided to go the opposite route--fill it up! Into my pound of grass-fed organic ground beef, I added: one egg, beaten almost past recognition; a liberal sprinkling dousing of Worchestershire Sauce, a small handfull of oats, a large handfull of shredded cheddar, a small onion finely diced, and a couple cloves of garlic similarly handled. I mixed well, oh yes I did.
Now, I have a problem with hamburger buns, and it is this: unless we're having 6 friends over for burgers, an 8-pack of buns tends to go to waste. Don't even get me started on 12-packs (or, rather, that's the problem: we just get started before mold overtakes them!). So I decided to use toasted bread. The only problem with that, of course, is that there's always so much extra bread hanging over your burger, and we didn't come here for bread, did we? We did not. This is where a flash of genius came into the kitchen. We have a big rubbermaid bread storage device. It's actually terrible for any homemade breads, because it keeps in too much moisture, creating an environment that mold loves and bread, well, doesn't. However, I took the lid of this container, which is square and just somewhat bigger than a slice of bread, and I put down some plastic wrap, and used this as a mold to create my burgers, smushing my mixture down into it good, then using the plastic wrap to wrangle the burger where I needed it.
This resulted in huge, huge burgers... just slightly larger than the toasted bread. In other words, perfect, as long as you're up for a burger that's 2/5 pound of meat plus probably enough filling to make a half pound. As it turned out, we were. These burgers were so good, I didn't even burden mine with condiments, which, after all, are what lazy cooks use to make things taste acceptable, right?
Except ketchup on sweet potato fries, which is another story entirely.
We've been making baked sweet potato fries for some years now, because they're awfully good and pretty darned healthy. We tried a new recipe last night, however, and in my opinion sweet potato fries took a giant leap forward as a result. Preheat the oven to 425. Cut up a sweet potato into fry-sized chunks. In a gallon ziplock bag, combine 1/4 c olive oil, a pinch of salt, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1/4 tsp cinnamon (yes, cinnamon) and 1/4 tsp allspice (uh huh, that's right, allspice). Mix that, then put the sweet potatoes in and toss to coat with oily spicy goodness. Put aluminum foil on a cookie sheet, put fries on foil, and bake for 10 minutes. Turn them over and bake another 10 minutes. Or longer (say, another 5 minutes on one side or the other--I'll leave that to your discretion; hell, do an extra 5 on each side, see if I care). Add your favorite catsup--or don't, they're good as is as are as were. Bon apetit!