Tartare on a bun

     A frequent exchange at home with Cod and cinetrix is as follows:
    One: "Hamburguesas."
    Other: "Que lastima."
    It's fun to say this, but it is also true that the ineffable wisdom of the state where we reside prevents its inhabitants from realizing a satisfying burger experience. Under some sort of pusilanimous sunbelt Sharia, all hamburgers must be cooked until grizzled and rubbery. Probably safer, but not very tasty. Cooking burgers at home is an option, but forming the patties yourself from the stuff on the styrofoam trays makes the prospect of rare meat that much sketchier, and we are miles from any of that fancy Montessori beef they sell at fancy supermarkets.

   A mad cow-averse friend took the stance of eating steak but not hamburger, on the theory that supermarket ground beef was an amalgam of an unknown number of cows, while a steak was just one. By eating steak, he could limit his number of cow partners, so to speak.

Eventually, it occurred to me that you could apply the same logic to hamburgers, if you did the grinding yourself. If you have a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, the Stanley Cup of bourgeois heterosexuals everywhere, the grinding attachment with the bigger plate does a fine job. Grinding your own burgers may sound like pioneer days, but the gain is worth the 5 min prep/3 min washup it adds. It is a relatively easy way to reverse engineer a meal with satisfying results.

    My usual  burger technique is one I lifted from Craig Claiborne,* who advocates a greasless pan sprinkled with a medium layer of salt, and then preheated. A hearty pinch of kosher should do the trick. It works very nicely--the salt keeps the burger from sticking, and the whole operation is viable even for those with sucky range hoods --hollering atcha, self!
   
    If memory serves it is also CC  who advocates adding a chopped shallot and worcestershire to the raw beef for flavor, and an egg yolk as a binder. As I considered the pile of chopped steak, the raw egg, and the shallots, it occurred to me that we were very close to tartare country. I found some capers in the door of the fridge, added them to the mix, and cooked the burgers even rarer than usual. Voilla--sort of tartare on a bun.** I am going to continue playing with this concept --next time, I will try flash searing on a Lodge hibachi.  Obviously, it ain't tartare if it ain't raw, but I'm excited to explore the crossover possibilities between the world of the hamburger and the world of the Tatars.***

* I have a different edition, actually called "The New New York Times Cookbook," so YMMV.
** I favor English muffins, on the grounds that if you would not eat it on its own, why put a burger on it?
***Evidently, the French named this dish after pillaging horsemen who would eat raw steaks tenderized by spending the day between the saddle and the horse.

Comments

[JL]

One touch that adds a lot of flavor: grilled onions--not just as a condiment, but grilled right with the beef, mingling together with it. The flavors fuse together most pleasingly. That's the way they roll at Stanley's Famous Hamburgers, and they know their way around a slider.

[Phil E.]

Why mess with hamburguesas, if you're talking grilled onions? Mize well get your cheesesteak on.

[Phil E.]

And what's with the Stevie Y lovefest pic? Is OGIC the HGIC of links, now? Mize well give her a penalty shot.