Homemade Burgers

Both sides of the kitchen we suffering a bit yesterday. This past Saturday was the most gorgeous day of the year so far and when we left the flat, basically, we felt invincible. That feeling continued throughout the entire day. Through a picnic with friends and severals bottles of beer, through making homemade burgers and then going for a dance afterwards. Absolutely nothing could ruin our day.

When we woke on Sunday with a dry taste in our mouths and smokey smell in our hair, we looked at each other expressed the same thing...."We were too drunk to enjoy that amazing burger, weren't we?". To cope with the terrible pang in our hearts we quickly came to the decision that we had to make burgers again. We still weren't right until we got to the grocery store and actually had the ingredients in our hands. We came home and pretended it never happened, burger wise. End of story.

There has been a gradual curiosity of burgers coming from Ben's side of the kitchen for a while. About once a week I'll receive an email from him with a link for a certain burger picture, blog or recipe. He'll want to discuss burgers in great detail and will absolutely swoon over menus, books and websites dedicated to the Great Patty. So, backed by weeks of research, a desire for the perfect burger and lots of love, we created a burger that went into my top 5 best burgers ever. Things we found really helpful are here. I don't want to give away too much information because I think that it's best to find your own way in the burger realm. Don't follow a recipe- just know that you want a kick-ass burger and go from there. You can't go wrong.

We didn't want a lot of fuss- just good beef, the appropriate bun and a few, select toppings. Some roast potato wedges on the side and good glass of beer. It's all a hangover needs, really.

To prepare the beef we took enough raw ground beef for two (quite big) patties and added about 1/4 cup bread crumbs, an egg yolk and some seasoning. Liquid smoke is nice but not necessary. A hot grill pan, skillet or frying pan will do the trick. If you have a cast iron skillet I highly recommend using it. We avoided adding salt to the mixture until after the patty was formed, one of many great tips we learned from reading the website linked above. And Ben reckons that it takes about six minutes each side to cook through and still be slightly pink in the middle.

Basically, this past weekend grilling meat was all the rage. The sun came out and Manchester said, "I want meat!" We were so pleased to wear t-shirts outside without jackets, dust off the sunglasses and sit on a blanket without wanting to wear it. Amazing.

So go make a burger already.....and send us a picture of it if you can:)