Main Recipe: Grilled Onion CheeseburgerOverallWhenever my wife and I were still regularly subscribing to Hello Fresh, I always loved when a burger recipe would pop up in our box. Not only are burgers something I generally enjoy quite a bit when they're made well, but they also tend to be relatively easy to make. Any burger night with Hello Fresh would take about thirty minutes from prep to plate. Unfortunately, much like with last week's risotto, this was not the case this time around. Some of this could have been anticipated, like the extra time needed to measure out ingredients for the special sauce, but other issues were just a case of unfortunate timing. Thinking we were going to eat the burgers before Monday, we left the ground beef in the fridge instead of the freezer, and in just that short window of time from getting the groceries to prepping the meal, the meat had already started to take on a brownish quality that made us both very uncomfortable. So with an added trip back to the grocery store coupled with all the extra prep time coming from measuring out ingredients, we were now looking at another hour and a half of cook time for a single hamburger. And maybe it's just me, but I don't think a hamburger should take as long to make as a risotto. But after all the meat was delivered and all the ingredients were prepped, how did everything turn out? Honestly, pretty dang good. This burger is enhanced quite a bit by the special sauce, which uses a combination of Dijon mustard, mayo, and ketchup as its base along with some garlic powder before folding in some pickled onions, which definitely added to the overall texture of the sauce. The biggest issue I had with this one (besides literally everything else I've said so far) was preparing the meat. This is seeming to become a trend with me with a lot of my meals recently. With the chicken cutlets, the issue was that we didn't cut them in half, so they retained a bit of a thickness that made it harder for flavors to penetrate. With the burgers, I think there was a similar issue with thickness. I essentially made four 8 oz. patties, and just cooking one on the stove and getting it up to temp took a good ten minutes, and even then I had to put it in the microwave to get it where it needed to be. I think I haven't quite figured out the precise alchemy for getting meat to the right temperature the first time, and if I make any more burgers during this project, I think I will go back through and watch some more videos about prepping meat to see if there's some essential piece I'm missing. RatingTASTE: 4/5 PRESENTATION: 4/5 Other MealsSo, the main goal for this week was to make two different recipes from the Hello Fresh stack, the grilled onion burger being the first of these. With the week being surprisingly busy and us heading out of town, though, it was difficult to find the motivation to try another recipe, especially considering how much more challenging it was to make the burger than anticipated. Considering that I prepped four burgers that were only going to be good for so many days and still had leftover risotto from Sunday, I figured I'd make my life a little easier and alternate between those meals for leftovers throughout the week. What I found was that the risotto got better as the week went on and the burgers were anything but the "easy" option for lunch or dinner.
Issues with getting the meat to its proper temperature persisted throughout the week. I tried a lot of different experimentation to see what would help and so far have not stumbled upon the correct formula. My second attempt at cooking the meat left me needing to microwave for another two minutes on top of the cook time. The third attempt saw me putting the meat in the oven on broil, though this time for so much time that I inadvertently melted all my cheese. For the fourth, I increased the initial temperature in the pan and did much more flipping to get a good sear and internal cook than I had earlier in the week. Of all my attempts, this was the best, but I still needed to put it in the oven on broil to get it closer to the correct temperature, which doesn't feel like it should be necessary if the burger is prepared correctly. All that to say that I lived those dang burgers this week, and my stomach definitely started to hate me for it after a while. I may make burgers again (dang it if I'm going to let them beat me), but I'm probably going to give it a few weeks before I tackle it again.
1 Comment
Austin Sweet
11/9/2023 07:27:32 am
All of these look very good, and I would love to try some of them.
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AuthorMr. Barker is a high school English teacher, and this website is his contribution to his classes' Genius Hour projects. ArchivesCategories |