I was sitting on the couch last night, talking about what I was going to make for this edition of MNMM. I've been keen to try a burger out, especially after watching an old episode of
Ever wondered about food? (great show by the way... watch it if you can find it). I was toying with the idea, thinking it over and over and came up with something that I was pretty sure would be impressive. Then, suddenly... BOOM out of nowhere ^this idea comes up - INSIDE-OUT BURGERS
™!!
Yeah, that's right, I'm
™'ing that sh*t... It might make my famous one day!
The concept here is to build a manly burger from the inside, out. I'll be starting from the usual condiments and fixin's, adding more layers until finishing with a layer of herby, spicy beef which on its own would make you weep tears of AWESOME. This is a first-time dish for me, but there are a couple of my 'trade' secrets as well go along. This is experi-cooking just the way I like it!
First up, you gotta have chups (sorry... cheeps) if you're having a burger. Good idea to get these underway now. I'm cooking a couple of portions (the wife's not here, but she has been chomping at the bit since we talked about this last night) so have done a couple of small potatoes and kumara (sweet potato) each. Make sure you cut the pieces even thickness etc & cut kumara slightly thicker as it tends to cook faster than normal spuds. Just oil them and bung 'em in the oven at 180°C.
Rough Inside-Out Burger recipe (makes 2 HUGE burgers):
- 400g Beef mince
- 2 fresh beef sausages (FRESH, not cured or pre-cooked. Get something spicy or flavoured to your liking)
- 1/2 an onion
- a couple of cloves of garlic
- about 50g cheese
- 1 fresh tomato
- 2-3 Tbsp green pesto (I don't like basil much, so have used spinach)
- 2 large rashers of bacon. Or 4 rashers if you're using streaky bacon
- Tomato sauce/Ketchup (but NEVER catsup) and Mustard
- Salt & Pepper to season
Finely dice up some onion (I prefer red) and garlic and sweat them off in a little oil. Sweating is just cooking them at a low heat so they don't brown, just sort of go limp & clear. Browning will make them lose too much of the flavour we want and the crunchiness will be blech. (That's the correct culinary term). If you prefer raw onion on the other-hand, no worries! Just skip this bit.
Chuck the beef into a bowl. Split your sausages open and squeeze the meat on in there. This is one of my big secrets when making burgers or meatballs. The sausage is already spiced with fresh ingredients that would cost a bit to buy on their own. This way, I spend $4 and get 300g of meat as well as all the seasoning the meat needs! Sausage meat helps the pattie bind as well, meaning less egg... for you hippies concerned about that sort of thing.
I want at bit of extra kick, so have added a decent wad of chopped jalapeños.
Chuck the onions and garlic in there, add a bit of parsley if you have it and plenty of salt and pepper.
Give it a mix - get in there with your hands. Remember to take off your rings, someone breaking their teeth on your wedding band would kinda suck. If it's your wife, you'll probably end up dead. I do NOT recommend hiding an engagement solitaire in the meat. You want something sticky, but not sloppy, if you need more 'stick' add an egg. If you need to dry it out, add a little bread crumb (or a big one...hur hur).
Now the fun part. For the centre, I am using cheese (Inside-Out Cheeseburger™ - you'll be hearing from my lawyer...) Take about half the cheese and kinda mush it into a flattened ball - like a miniature hockey puck. I've used a smokey cheese which is itself wrapped in layer of mozzarella. I'm not into egg on my burgers, but with a bit of ingenuity (sorry if you're an Aussie, you're out of luck in that case) you could get one in there I reckon.
For the salad, I'm using spinach pesto and chopped up tomatoes. I reckon you could use beetroot too if that was your thing. Sicko.
Take your bacon and lay it flat. Spread the 'salad' mixture nice and evenly over one half. I've used whole middle bacon here - when I make these again, I'll use streaky bacon as I reckon it would be easier to wrap.
Plonk the cheese onto the bacon, smear with more salad mixture and wrap up with the remaining bacon. Try and get it as tightly wrapped as possible. This bacon wasn't quite the right thing, but shit it was tasty. It's bacon, of COURSE it was tasty. Pfft.
Roll a piece of cling-film out onto the bench and smush a layer of beef in a rectangle about 20cm long x 10cm wide x 1.5cm thick. Add your ketchup (but NEVER catsup) and mustard at this point. The only thing I haven't added here that I would normally put in a burger is mayo. Warm mayo is wrong. So very, very wrong. Think about it...ew.
Position the bacony, cheesy puck in the middle of the meat. Pull up one end of the cling-film first, rolling it over the top of the ball and sort of press it down, the meat should stick to the bacon allowing you to peel the plastic back - too easy. Repeat with the other sides until you have a kind of ugly pile of cow flesh.
At this stage, you can work your best brickie skills and make it look all pretty and what-not. If you feel you've got too much beef for the size of the jewel of cheese and bacon etc in the middle, just trowel a bit off. This recipe is plenty for 2 huge burgers. (See that on the plate there? That's a NORMAL sized tomato...) I've transferred this very carefully to a piece of baking paper as we're going to bake this for a bit (about 15-20 mins at 180°C). If you tried to cook this straight on the grill, you'd burn the outside before the cheese in the middle melted. Gross.
To check if it's cooked thru, poke a knife into the middle, there will melted cheese on it if it's done. NOW you can put the whole thing on the grill. As it's winter, I'm doing this on the cast iron griddle. Finishing this on the BBQ would be bad ass, but it's freezing out! If you
are moving it around, just be super careful. This whole dish relies on the middle staying in the middle. It would kinda defeat the point if all the insidey bits that would normally be on the outside end up not on the inside, but on the outside by accident. Right? Wait... what?
For the bun, I've used a big panini (that should be a juxtaposition)... I was expecting these things to be big man! And lastly, just a bit of mayo. Just 'cause I said it was the devil if it was hot, doesn't mean I wasn't going to put some on there! Anyway, it'll stick the top bun on and stop it from blowing away. Or something...
Cut the whole thing in half (if you can eat it whole, you're more of a man that I can ever hope to be. Srsly.) You should see a nice layering of all the different stuff we've jammed in there - like in the first pic in this post. For presentation, you could jab one of those little toothpick flaggy things in the middle (did you know that the different colour is normally used to denote how the pattie is cooked? E.g. rare, medium rare etc. The food safety nazis in this part of the world won't let places serve burgers anything less cooked than 'buggered' - bastards) or do a schmear of tomato sauce on the plate. I've taken my chups and kinda stacked them up - I'm just cooking for myself tonight, but it doesn't mean that I can't have a little fun with the way things look on the plate.
I'm pretty please with how this turned out and think it was a success - it tasted ridiculous. Ideally, I would've liked a bit more colour. Tomatoes are a bit shit this time of year, in summer they would look spectac-lear in there. The smoked cheese I used, while looking like a solid lump at the end did actually melt, but it's not one of those nice oozey cheeses that would work so well with this. But that's what this is all about... having a crack and learning new stuff for next time. Every great dish starts off as an experiment - next time this will be even better! You never know... one day you might be paying me to have one!
Get out, have a go and get expericooking! (
™... just kidding!)
-Jeffois
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