1.  Cooked over an open flame - I'm definitely not a fried hamburger kinda gal.

2.  Bacon - A hamburger without bacon just seems naked to me.  While this generally means the bacon is on top I've seen some recent variations with the bacon inside which sounds rather intriguing.

3.  Cheese - Everything is better with cheese and hamburgers are no exception.  My personal favorite is Cheddar but any cheese, except generic American cheese which I don't actually consider to be a cheese, will elevate your hamburger.

4.  Breadcrumbs - Ok so I admit I'm not actually a huge fan of breadcrumbs in my hamburger but Husband loves them in his.

5.  Crispy onions - A local brewery (Tied House) has a hamburger topping called Santa Fe Onions that are amazing.  They are very thinly sliced pieces of onion with a very thin bread coating that are deep fried.  They add a great crunch component to the hamburgers.  Of course they also add a bunch of fat but that's why we don't have hamburgers but 2 or 3 times a year at most!

6.  A hearty roll -  A great hamburger is not just the meat and toppings!  The roll is equally if not more important.  Ever had a hamburger with a weak, limp, roll that turns to mush as you eat the hamburger?  Well, at that point the meat and toppings could be the best thing in the world but the hamburger is going to be horrible.  A great hamburger has a sturdy and substantial roll that can stand its own against any amount of meat and toppings thrown its way.

7.  Greens - the healthy crunch!  If the crispy onions were just too high in fat but you still want a crunch factor to your hamburger then greens are the way to go.  Anything will work but I like lettuce that has some power to it like a nice piece of Romaine or even some simple, nutrient lacking iceberg simply to add crunch.

8.  Mushrooms - This is another husband favorite.  Sautéed (or grilled) mushrooms.... yum.

9.  Proper cooking - Over cooked hamburgers are dry and flavorless but so are hamburgers that are pressed while cooking.  In high school, I was a grill cook at a small restaurant and they had a weight to put on the hamburgers so they would cook faster.  Unfortunately the result was all of the juices were pressed out of the hamburgers.  Patience works best with hamburgers.

10.  Proper assembly - It all goes in the same place so what's it matter how its assembled?  Well, I would have to disagree.  First, you have to assemble the burger so you can eat it without it falling apart - beware the slide factor!  Too much sauce or slippery greens can make the hamburger slide off the roll.   Second you want the flavors to complement each other and be evenly proportioned - this is why bacon in the burger appeals to me.  And perhaps most importantly you want the burger to be able to fit in your mouth - don't make a Dagwood! 

Enjoy!

PermaLink

Bars, especially good ones, have a large number of liquors to choose from.  But if you are trying to set-up a home bar you really can't have 30 or more bottles of open booze just sitting around.  Instead, you must choose the liquors that are most appropriate for your tastes.  This isn’t an easy thing to do but it’s also not the only issue with setting up a home bar.   You also have to figure out what mixers you want to stock in your home bar. 

Husband and I have been building our bar over the past couple of years and we’re still experimenting with different liquors and mixers to keep in stock.  At first, unless we made a standard drink like Gin &Tonic or Rum & Coke, we had problems finding interesting drinks to make with the various mixtures of liquors and mixers we’d have in stock.  Initially, we did web searches for drinks, but ultimately we found that having a computer next to the bar was less than idea (yes even for us computer-centric Silicon Valley people!).  Next, we bought a bar guide to help us pick interesting drinks.

Problem is that most bar guides only have an index of the drinks and each chapter focuses on a primary alcohol base.  What this means is that drinks using Rum are primarily in the Rum chapter but you can also find Rum, in lesser quantities, in drinks from many other chapters.  This makes finding drinks using specific liquors difficult.  Luckily, last year I found a better drink book ("The Bartender's Bible by Gary Regan") that has an index of what drinks use which liquors.  Now we can target a specific alcohol and find all the drinks that use it. 

Perfect right?  Well, we thought so.  That is, until this past weekend when we realized we had a nice odd mixture of mixers and fillers (cranberry juice, grapefruit juice, sour mix etc.) that we needed to use up soon. Great we thought - just look in the index and ... nope - the index is by drink names and alcohol but not mixers.  Sigh - why is it that improvements never seems to be quite enough?  Maybe the next edition of the guide will index the mixers... In the mean time if you have a favorite drink that uses cranberry juice, sour mix and mandarin oranges (or some combination thereof) let me know!

PermaLink

A recent blog event, Leftover Tuesdays (see here for the most recent challenge), has presentations of dishes created from leftovers.  Great idea! Especially if you have meat such as a large roast and don't want the same thing for several nights, but it doesn't really apply to me.  I generally make dishes that have all of the ingredients mixed together like casseroles, stir fries, noodle or pasta dishes, and so forth.  These dishes tend to be four  servings and we have them for two nights.  Sure, we sometimes have a meat dish and eat the same thing several nights but I'm not much of a meat eater so this doesn't happen often.  

This doesn't mean I don't have a leftover problem - I just define leftovers differently.  To me leftovers are the remaining odd ingredients that I needed for a dish but did not finish.  Examples are a bit of cream, some chicken broth, a bit of cheese - or worse yet a funky spice or sauce that I like but only have a couple of dishes to use it in.  These types of leftovers are a challenge because either you only have a little bit left that you can't do much with or you have a lot left, such as a spice, but you wouldn't want to use much in a single recipe.  Some of the items can be frozen like the broth, some have long shelf lives like some sauces, and some are so easy to use I don't consider them something I'm using up but something I simply enjoy to eat like cheese. Yet, what to do with a 1/4 of a container of sour cream or a bit of cream?  Are these leftovers?  Well according to one on-line definition:

Leftover

• a small part or portion that remains after the main part no longer exists
• not used up; "leftover meatloaf".

PermaLink

As Valentines Day approaches I've been thinking back to my first date with my then to-be Husband.  Since we are Foodies it probably won't surprise you to learn that we cooked on our first date.  In fact, we cooked chili and it was his idea.  This said, it’s fitting that this weekend, just before Valentines Day, we made chili.

Many things have changed since we made chili on that first date.  For one, we no longer live in Buffalo, NY which means we have access to a much wider range of food.  Yet, perhaps for sentimental reasons, we still make the same basic recipe we made nearly 20 years ago on our first date. The "recipe" uses a chili mix called “Carol Shelby's Chili Kit”  which contains a “secret” blend of spices to produce a Texas flavored chili.  Amazingly this chili kit is not only still available but we've been able to find it throughout the past 20 years in Buffalo, Houston and now California.  We make a custom version of the chili that includes ground beef, ground turkey (a recent poke at a healthier chili), diced tomatoes, and kidney beans.  We also cook the chili a lot longer than the mixes suggested 15 minutes.  Still, the chili tastes much better the second day. 

Once the chili is prepared another series of traditions begins.  The chili must be accompanied by Round Yellow Corn Chips, cheddar cheese, and beer!  The corn chips are used to scoop out chili, although we also use a spoon it’s not as much fun.  The cheddar cheese gets sprinkled on top and the beer - well that one’s probably pretty clear it washes down the chili and cools off the palate.  After a meal or two of chili this way the tradition then progresses one step further with the addition of elbow macaronis - and yes they must be elbows left over penne simply will not do.  Why add macaroni?  Well, when you make a double batch of chili but only have two people to share it you can quickly become tired of chili.  Adding the macaroni transforms the chili into a somewhat different dish which means I can handle eating it a few more days.

It’s funny how traditions become traditions.  We don't make chili very much anymore but every time we do I remember back to that first date and get just a little teary eyed (ok so maybe the half dozen onions we put in the chili help) thinking just how important cooking and food has been in my life....

Hope ya’ll enjoy Valentines Day!

PermaLink