Delicious meatburgers!

[theweaselking]

A sudden craving led to CHEESEBURGERS. And the discovery that nobody sells premade burger patties in December that don't come frozen in a box of 12 has led to delicious meatwads.

The meatwads:
1 lb lean ground beef
2tbsp Montreal steak spice
1 small onion, finely diced
1/2 can Guinness

Mix all those things in a bowl. Stick it in your fridge for an hour or so.
(NB: this will make a slightly-"runny" burger. Fattier ground beef will stick together better, or you could add binder, or you could just Deal With It. I just dealt with it, which was helped by cooking on a grill pan and not on a live grill where meat could fall between the bars)

Pull it out and form four patties with it. Lightly dust the patties with garlic salt. Grill 'em like a steak: Throw them on the heat and just leave them. Don't poke them. Don't prod them. When they're cooked a little more than halfway through, flip them, once. Wait until the juices start coming out the top clear, then pull them off the heat and serve on toasted whole wheat kaiser rolls with your favourite burger toppings. For cheeseburgers, cover them with finely sliced cheddar cheese shortly after flipping and let it melt.

Comments

[frith]

"Montreal" steak spice? Que c'est ça? Who sells it?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Montreal steak spice, originally from Schwartz's. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_steak_seasoning)

I use La Grille's version, available in the spice aisle of any Loblaws.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I still have a jar of the Real Stuff that I picked up at Schwartz's during Worldcon '09; before that, I used the Club House version.

-- Steve loves what it does to beef.

[frith]

Hunh! The things you learn about your own back yard! It's in Wikipedia no less. Thanks!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Montreal has some of the best delis and meat-related establishments in the world.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

Schwartz's has basically perfected the smoked meat sandwich. There's a reason people pay way too much money to overnight their meat to various North American destinations.

Here in Toronto we have Caplansky's which is also amazing, so not having ready access to Schwartz's is bearable.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Ottawa has the Dunn's franchise. Which is both awesome and on Elgin street so nobody EVER goes there when they're not smashed. As such, it is basically perfect.

[harper-knight.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty good, but I'm one of those burger purists (at least when I make burgers at home, which I do fairly regularly, because I live in a land where good burger joints are.. few and far between) - if the patty has anything in it except beef, salt & pepper, it isn't a burger patty, it's a meatloaf for a meatloaf sandwich. But this particular meatloaf is less polluted than many of the meatloafs some people call burger patties. And I almost always put onion on my burgers anyway... just not *in* them. The difference is probably mostly academic I guess :D

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

So use onion powder? Beer, Beef + Spices, some of the spices just happen to be a little more solid than others.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

Ground beef, even locavore super special grade-A whatever ground beef, is made up of the last fleshy bits the slaughterhouse can pick off the carcass before it's sent off to the dogfood/hotdog factory. Whatever you think of the taste, texture or preparation of your ground-up butchers' leavings, 'purity' doesn't enter into the equation.

I eat lots of burgers, but I have no delusions about them.

[harper-knight.livejournal.com]

Some of my friends buy steak and grind their own hamburger meat. I don't; mostly because I can't afford it, but that's how the real burger purists do it. I have no illusions of what the *quality* of the beef I'm eating is, but it is pure in the sense that it isn't full of bits of onion, egg, all the other stuff some people put in patties. It isn't 'pure' hunks-of-specific-piece-of-muscle, but it is 'pure' fleshy-bits-at-least-probably-from-the-same-sort-of-animal.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

Waste of a good steak. That's like using 15-year Bordeaux as cooking wine.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

The one fifteen-year old Bordeaux I could quickly find listed goes for $375, but given that a Bordeaux from ten or twelve years ago can comfortably range from sixty dollars (probably not that "nice") to a thousand, that comparision seems... less than useful, as well as dismissive. I mean, how much does a good steak cost?

Still, I absolutely understand! Doing something like that... why, it's like using fine-quality watercolours for a birthday card you don't expect the recipient to keep.
- or hand-painted silk for knitting a scarf you're not expecting to wear.
- or, honestly, knitting.

Hobbies and indulgences: not usefully subject to other people's determinations of "waste".

[thornae.livejournal.com]

Anecdote: Within our first fortnight of moving to France, my wife wanted to make a bolognese. Having not seen it anywhere, I looked up the French word for mincemeat, and went to the butcher to ask for some "viande hachée".

He proceeded to select one of his nicest steaks and put it through the mincer right there and then, while I watched in horrified silence. I then paid what was, at the time, AU$40/kg for 600g of mincemeat.


On the other hand, on the same shopping excursion I picked up an extremely drinkable 2002 Bordeaux for about AU$7. And it really was a very nice bolognese.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

Onions ruin otherwise good food... yick.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

You are history's greatest monster.

[spartonian.livejournal.com]

Sweet!

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

RAW onions ruin otherwise good food. Cooked onions are another matter entirely.

[skiriki.livejournal.com]

Raw onions rock, you heretic. :D

[kowh.livejournal.com]

I concur, heartily when the onions are caramelized. Raw onion just ends in tears.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

Likewise. The closer the onion is to pure brown sugar, the better. Raw onions make salads into sadness.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I KNOW I saw it on Metafilter at some point, but I can't find the recreation someone did of the Five Guys recipe. Something something two kinds of beef, coarsely ground, etc. Instead I found this, this, and this.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Note that the first link uses a shallot instead of a small onion, which sounds even better.

[pajaro-ca.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure Costco sells them fresh all year, no?
(not to take anything away from this!)

[jerril]

If so, then only by the hemi-cow, which can be awkward for fresh meat :D

[pajaro-ca.livejournal.com]

↑ no0b

What is a hemi-cow?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Use of a faux-greek for "half a cow". My standard complaint is that Costco meat portions are measured in "hemicows and decapoulty."

You can buy *16* chicken breasts, but try getting *two*. Y'know?

[pajaro-ca.livejournal.com]

haha awesome, love it and yes, I am very familiar.
I am constantly battling my hose-bends "BUT IT'S SUUUUCH A GOOD DEAL!" argument.
...s'not a good deal if 10 of the 12 whatevers go bad.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

FWIW, those are quite useful portion sizes for families of size >5 with deep freezes. Although buying it from a retailer misses out on the whole "spend an entire day butchering the animal you raised from cute fuzzy thing to adulthood" aspect.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Granted, and no argument, beyond "I am a two adult, no kids, and the dog is NOT ALLOWED NON-NOVEL PROTEINS" household.

Which makes Costco's excesses.... decadent. And awesome. But also "requires careful planning."

(OIdcat is old, and allowed whatever she damn well pleases - but while I will happily shred bits of chicken for her, she doesn't eat much, certainly not on Costco scales)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

PS: No, seriously. The dog eats Kangaroo.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

Kangaroo is awesome dog food. It is also awesome people food.
One of the things I miss about living in Aus is cheap roo steaks in the supermarket.

(Also, apparently the reposting bug struck again. Sorry about that - still haven't tracked down what's doing it.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

In this case, it's for allergies. The problem is, we can't find anyone, not even the local kangaroo farmers[1], who can get me a kangaroo thigh to replace her traditional Christmas Cow Femur.


[1]: I have local kangaroo farmers. Awesome, or most awesome?

[thornae.livejournal.com]

Most awesome. I am quite jealous.


And I suspect you'd have difficulty finding a roo femur even in Australia, unless you were a) rural and/or b) friends with a roo shooter. The roo meat industry is pretty strictly controlled, and you don't tend to see much variety in the available cuts of meat.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Amazon Australia sells dried kangaroo bones, specifically to be used as dog treats. But they won't deliver overseas.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

Um, despite many, many Aussies complaining vociferously about it, there is currently no Amazon Australia. I really wish there were - it would make Christmas shopping for relatives about a million times easier.


But of the various other sites that sell dried roo bits (I had thought you meant fresh, BTW), I can see why they don't ship overseas - I imagine the import restrictions are pretty difficult to overcome, and probably not worth their trouble.


Still, maybe your local roo farmer will diversify. (If so, be sure to post Triumphant Macropodivore Dogmonster photos.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it was amazon US? Point is, it's not Amazon Canada, and the Amazon in question won't deliver to Canada, and it's actually kind of hard to justify delivering meat products to a US location and having someone carry them to me.

[thornae.livejournal.com]

Also, we had a dog who ended up having to go vegetarian, with supplements. He didn't mind too much, but we had to make sure the living areas were well ventilated from then on...

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I wasn't at Costco. And this was better!

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

I can has some of that now?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Come visit, I'll put you up in the spare room, let the kitten sleep on you, and cook. Fair deal, no?

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. Can't ask for any fairer.