Stanley is staying with me for a few weeks, and I thought it was a great opportunity to make a recipe that's been calling to me for a while: Thomas Keller's perfect hamburgers from the Ad Hoc at Home Cookbook.
Despite my irritation with some of the styling choices in this cookbook, every recipe so far has turned out to be absolutely fantastic, which is helping me get over that.
We went out to Blood Farm over the weekend to pick up the cuts of beef that Thomas Keller suggests, since you pretty much need to use the best meat possible when you're striving for perfection. The recipe calls for two parts sirloin, one part brisket, and one part chuck.
This is cut into a large dice and seasoned with salt and pepper before grinding... (For the 3 pounds of meat in the recipe, Keller suggests 1 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper.)
The meat is then run through a grinder's coarse grinding plate into a bowl set over an ice water bath.
I threw the coarse-ground beef into the fridge to chill for a while, since the ol' bowl-of-ice-water trick has failed me pretty consistently in sausage-making, then ran the meat through the finer grinding plate.
The meat is then gently shaped into patties, being careful to keep some of those strands above intact...
After grilling to medium-rare, the burger is topped with extra-sharp white cheddar (or not), in preparation for plating.
Because it is what I believe Thomas Keller would want me to do, I made the homemade hamburger buns from Happy in the Kitchen...
And that's it. We cooked up a bit of bacon, sliced some tomato and red onion, then topped with arugula...
Toss some pita chips on the plate, and you will soon find yourself in burger heaven...
Both Stanley and I had to stop after almost every bite to exclaim "Wow! Have you tasted this?!?!?" I've never had such a flavorful burger in my life, and will never make burgers any other way again. As tends to be the case, Thomas Keller always knows the best route to perfection...
Despite my irritation with some of the styling choices in this cookbook, every recipe so far has turned out to be absolutely fantastic, which is helping me get over that.
We went out to Blood Farm over the weekend to pick up the cuts of beef that Thomas Keller suggests, since you pretty much need to use the best meat possible when you're striving for perfection. The recipe calls for two parts sirloin, one part brisket, and one part chuck.
This is cut into a large dice and seasoned with salt and pepper before grinding... (For the 3 pounds of meat in the recipe, Keller suggests 1 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper.)
The meat is then run through a grinder's coarse grinding plate into a bowl set over an ice water bath.
I threw the coarse-ground beef into the fridge to chill for a while, since the ol' bowl-of-ice-water trick has failed me pretty consistently in sausage-making, then ran the meat through the finer grinding plate.
The meat is then gently shaped into patties, being careful to keep some of those strands above intact...
After grilling to medium-rare, the burger is topped with extra-sharp white cheddar (or not), in preparation for plating.
Because it is what I believe Thomas Keller would want me to do, I made the homemade hamburger buns from Happy in the Kitchen...
And that's it. We cooked up a bit of bacon, sliced some tomato and red onion, then topped with arugula...
Toss some pita chips on the plate, and you will soon find yourself in burger heaven...
Both Stanley and I had to stop after almost every bite to exclaim "Wow! Have you tasted this?!?!?" I've never had such a flavorful burger in my life, and will never make burgers any other way again. As tends to be the case, Thomas Keller always knows the best route to perfection...
No comments:
Post a Comment