notasteak 1.0

Greetings true believers. As previously mentioned not everything I received was a steak. There were a handful of burgers in there as well and I figured it was about time to break them out. I recently did two of them, the first not pictured here. That was a day of pure laziness and spare parts. But I can tell you this:

Guacamole, Onion, Tomato, Lettuce, Poppyseed Roll, Agave Catsup, Peppered Bacon, Swiss Cheese. I think that was it. It was just fine. Easy, simple. 

for last nights, I turned back to the recipes. Here's the thing about burger recipes, They all want you to start with ground beef/turkey/etc for which defeats the purpose of all ready pattied omaha steak burgers. While some that have been sent to me or I've looked up sound wonderful, I fear crumbling up these burgers into ground beef and reconstructing them.

However there was one sent to me by my sister, a Hawaiian style burger that only wanted you to shape the ground beef into patties, without mixing in a 5 page list of ingredients. And it sounded really good. Since it was the weekend and I wasn't done being ultimately lazy, the side was a simple enough choice to go with this burger.

Skillet French Fries

I now envy those who own mandolins. Even on that first test burger it would have been nice to have a slice of tomato or onion that wasn't a millimeter on one end and three inches wide on the other. For the fries I was told "simply cut a potato into 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch strips. Heh. I have a feeling those with the experience and steady hand to accomplish this on the most awkwardly shaped and dense vegetable for precision cutting, probably own a device already that can do it for them. As for me, I was pretty happy to come close.

The rest was simply oil in the skillet, toss them in, flip them every minute till all sides were golden, remove to paper towel and salt. And it really was that easy and we can now add french fries to the list of things I shouldn't know how to cook, but that I now do. 

But there was something else about this recipe. Something glorious. It said at the end, "if not serving right away, place in a 325 degree oven to keep warm." And a tear came to my eye. 

The agave catsup is good stuff too.

Hawaiian Burger

mmmmm. I went to sleep full of Aranciata Pellegrino, with sugar plum like visions of the burger I had eaten still jitterbugging in my head. Once I had formed the burger (and by this I mean opened it) I took the mixture of pineapple juice and teriyaki and made a little bath for it to relax in. Pineapple slices also joined in the fun. Then I went back and made the fries while those lazy bastards just sat around enjoying their marinade. Once the fries were keeping warm in the oven, it was just a matter of toasting the bun, cooking up some more peppered bacon (I have been enjoying the peppered bacon from the meat counter over the regular. If there's any confusion about this, see....well, any other post, in regards to my intimate, personal feelings about black pepper) and cooked up the burgers. 

Sure, with all that pineapple juice and teriyaki soaked into the meat it created a mushroom cloud of smoke that the vent or my open door couldn't properly filter out, but at least I found out I don't believe my smoke alarms work so, no worries. Once the burger was done the pineapples had their turn and it all came together like so:

Top Bun

Catsup

Lettuce

Bacon

Onion

Pineapple

Swiss Cheese

Burger

Catsup

Bottom Bun

And it was about that thick. Iceberg lettuce was again good in one of the few situations in which is proves itself, if for nothing more than the crunch it makes when you try to compress this all together to fit in your food hole.

Now that we're six pieces of meat in, I'm beginning to realize the scope of what ten times the meat I've eaten already is looking like, both in terms of time and...meat. The meat box seems no emptier than when we started. But that doesn't scare me. There's bound to be ups and downs, perfect rubs and grease fires, but fear not, I am committed to this relationship. 

I'm also now addicted to Aranciata Pellegrino. Could be worse.