Yesterday’s post spoke of a weekly burger special that left a lot to be desired.
Today’s post will describe a burger that came along later that same day and saved everyone’s lives.
Straight out of Food Network Magazine’s December, 2012 issue, the French Onion Burger was a decision I made that could be potentially questionable considering how much I don’t like onions – especially when it was the onions that made me dislike the lunch burger so much. I’ll clarify that my problem isn’t with onions in general, just raw onions. Steam them, deep fry them, sauté them, caramelize them and I’ll eat them up, and that’s just what this burger did.
Taking a different approach to this blog than I do with some of my others:
Needed items:
1) EVOO (about 2T)
2) Onion, thinly sliced
3) Granulated Sugar (about 2t)
4) Salt (about 2t)
5) Worcestershire sauce (about 2T + 1t)
6) Chicken Broth (about 1/2 cup – I use Chicken (and beef) Broth Base – nearly indefinite shelf life and much easier to store than chicken broth
7) 1lb ground beef – I used “Laura’s Lean”
8) Onion Powder (to taste)
9) Whole wheat hamburger buns
10) Sliced Cheese (I used Muenster)
11) Finley grated, fresh parmesan cheese
This really only has three parts to it. I fried up the onions in the EVOO for about three minutes over medium-high, then reduced the heat to medium-low and tossed in the salt & sugar, then let the onions sweat and caramelize for the next 12-15 minutes.
Meanwhile I pre-heated my broiler and hand-pressed together the beef, a little of the worcestershire sauce and the onion powder in a small bowl and made four even patties with a slight divot in the center. After arranging the patties onto a aluminum foil-lined tray, I switched to a different tray where I had laid out the buns and topped each “lid” with a slice of muenster and a bit of parmesan.
When the onions finished, I poured in the broth and the rest of the worcestershire sauce and stirred around until nearly all of the moisture had dried up – somewhere around five minutes. Meanwhile I put the burgers under the broiler for 3 minutes, flipped, then back under for another 2. Once done, I put the buns in for about a minute – just long enough to melt the cheese.
The recipe called for mustard on the bottom but we were out, so I layered a bit of lettuce on the bottom, then burger, onions and cheese bread and put that baby on a plate next to a pile of Doritos because we’re gourmet freaks like that.
The end result was much, much better than lunch’s sad experience. The burgers were juicy (though I would’ve preferred a less-lean burger), onions sweet and cheese was perfect since Muenster is my favorite kind. Definitely a burger #win.
But making up for lunch wasn’t enough, no. I had to go one step further and bust out a nice sweet for the lasses (and lads) at work so I went to a recipe given to me by a coworker and over the course of about 30 minutes busted out a batch of about 32 Pumpkin Cheesecake Croissants! (Recipe Here)
A little bit of a mess to make but well worth the effort and cleanup. These guys are surprisingly easy to make and alter. I added a little bit of cinnamon and a tad more sugar to the filling. Due to the mess my idea of brushing the tops with butter didn’t happen but I will definitely bake these a minute or two longer next time as these guys were a little doughy (how I prefer them), though I guess a lot of people prefer them that way because of the 32 croissants, I took 30 to work and every one of them got eaten! We’ll call that success!
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Beard Hair In My Coffee 5.0 