Burger

Back when our friend Claire Mullally owned Bobbie’s Dairy Dip, a ’50s-style ice cream and burger drive-in, she organized Sunday night parking lot jam sessions to drum up a little business in the cooler fall months. Where else but Nashville can you see Country Music Award and Grammy Award winners and nominees play for tips with no cover charge and a side of sweet potato fries? The jam band was complete when a cab arrived straight from the airport carrying Claire’s husband, songwriter/musician Greg Trooper, just landing from a tour with John Prine. The standing room only parking lot was rocking with loyal Dip families filling up on live music, behemoth burgers, and soft-serve sundaes. The only thing missing was a beer truck. Claire juggled the kitchen, the counter, and managed to sing back-up on a cranking cover of “Love the One You’re With.” Our version of the Dip’s guac burger is a beauty featuring a juicy beef patty adorned with cheese, a smear of guacamole, salsa, sour cream, tomato and onion, and jalapeño slices instead of pickles.

These are an excellent choice for late summer when fresh tomatoes are at their besto.

Our other favorite Nashville chicken joint, McDougal’s Village Coop, is renowned for its fried chicken tenders, Peyton Manning’s UT Knoxville fridge door bolted to the ceiling, and kegs of local Yazoo beer on tap. We renamed our favorite patty melt the “Daddy Melt” after owner Tommy McDougal announced the news of his first child and because it was his late stepdad Tanksley Foster’s favorite lunch. Unfortunately, the burger’s success led to its extinction. It was just too popular for a place whose motto is “Chicken and Beer.”

The big idea here was to create hamburger-style meat in a slow cooker without the hassle of ground beef patties. We combined the flavors of a grilled burger, including the condiments, with the convenience of a slow-cooked chuck roast. The pickle juice really pulled it together. After piling the meat on a bun with the usual backyard fixings, a member of our live-in focus group said, without any prompting whatsoever, “This tastes just like McDonald’s!” We celebrated with dorky, teen-embarrassing high-fives all around. A crock of pulled chuck burgers alongside a cooker filled with Crock Dogs (page 71) makes for the ultimate indoor hots and hams party. Consider this winning combo for kids’ parties, tailgating, and a snowy or rainy or crowded Super Bowl. Look at this as another good reason for additional slow cookers. One just isn’t enough, but you probably guessed that by now.

This indoor burger recipe make six burgers (too many for one pan), so use the broiler or finish the pan-seared burgers all at once in the oven. Ground beef is available in plenty of designer styles and fat-to-lean ratios. Use what you like. Remember that the higher fat content varieties like chuck have a rich, juicy taste and a smoother texture than the leaner ones, which tend to be dry and grainy. Chuck will also spatter up your stovetop and broiler a bit more. Either way, good ventilation is important. Burger doneness is an individual right that the government recommends you exercise at 160°F for proper food safety. Whatever temperature you pick, remove the burgers from heat when they are about 5 degrees below that target as the temperature will continue to rise while the meat rests. R. B. himself goes into fits above 130°F. He’s still with us, knock on wood, despite rare burgers and the raw oysters he downs with abandon.

Cinco de Mayo actually marks the 1862 Mexican victory over the French, not Mexican Independence Day, as some believe. Thanks to Madison Avenue, it’s a holiday more enthusiastically embraced north of the border than south. To celebrate this semicorporate affair, grilled Burgos de Mayo combine all our favorite Mexican flavors (including the tequila) on one bun. Top them off with Mayo de Mayo, our Cinco “special sauce.”

My cooks sometimes refer to Lucques as the “house of pork.” I use pork often and in every form I can think of—marinated, brined, grilled, sautéed, confited, braised, ground into sausage or forcemeat, wrapped around fish or poultry, as a seasoning or an appetizer or a complete main course. This recipe is proof: with three kinds of pork packed into one dish, it’s a regular porkapalooza. These burgers completely satisfy my frequent pork cravings, and I think they’ll take care of yours, too. After all, few cultures appreciate pork better than the Latin ones, and these burgers pay homage to that culinary love. And it’s some spicy, decadent homage, too: Mexican chorizo, Spanish romesco, and the coup de grâce, a slice of melted Manchego on top. Do not be afraid to cook these burgers only until pink in the middle, when they are still juicy and delicious. Not only are all dangerous pork parasites killed at 137°F (long before the last pink disappears), but those organisms have been nearly eliminated from modern pork farming, so the risk is extremely low even from completely raw pork.

The dressing and pickles here are magic—they make the burger. Sometimes, I make full-size burgers with 7-ounce patties, but I generally prefer sliders. That way, you can eat more of everything else you serve on the side. The best burger meat comes from aged beef chuck that is freshly ground by your butcher.

This will delight vegetarians—and carnivores, too. The warm, meaty mushrooms are so satisfying, especially when topped with pickled chiles, arugula, and Parmesan shavings. Fragrant fresh rosemary, which too often overpowers, adds a subtle depth of flavor to homemade mayonnaise, which is key here.

Quinoa (keen-wah), though not a cereal grain because it is not a grass plant, is nonetheless a life-sustaining grain native to the Andes Mountains in what is now Peru, Chile, and Bolivia. Although it was a staple food of the Inca, who peopled those high places, somewhere along the way it got shuffled aside for wheat and rice, grain imports from the Old World, and for corn, the New World’s other great grain. There it remained, in the shadows of time, until recently, when health aficionados rediscovered its food value and deliciousness. Quinoa’s nutrition is unique among the grains of the world. Within each tiny, almost miniscule bit of it, there is complete protein. When cooked, the grains puff up four times their size into a pillowy mass that resembles the cells in a beehive, with each compartment distinct. That means quinoa serves up not only plenty of nutrition but also enough bulk to make a filling meal. Together with tofu, their nutrition pedigree becomes double blue ribbon.

Hamburgers reign supreme in the annals of American food, indeed in the annals of fast food around the world. Establishments that proffer them have made incursions into seemingly unlikely places to the extent that it is hardly surprising to see hamburgers on menus almost anywhere from Paris to Beijing. In fact, the humble beef patties have become such big business that there’s just no stopping them. And what is this icon of American enterprise? The answer is simple: it’s ground beef seasoned with salt. In other words, hamburger is quintessential sausage, and people love it. So do I. In fact, hamburgers-for-dinner is one of my default meals. For my house hamburger, I choose organic, pasture-raised beef, which, though slightly more expensive, is definitely tastier and more healthful than average ground beef. I lightly season the meat with salt and chill it for a few hours to let the salt do its work tenderizing the meat and making it more succulent. The Dijon mayo, pickled onions, and crunchy lettuce are fundamental, as are the artisanal buns, my favorite being ciabatta buns. Where are the tomatoes? I left them by the wayside in the development of my house hamburger. Their acid element and red color is supplied by the pickled onions. But, sometimes I add sliced heirloom tomatoes if it’s tomato season, or perhaps a splash of ketchup on one side of the bun. A hamburger is, after all, a personal thing, subject to whims of the moment.

The secret to these burgers—inspired by those found at diners and roadside stands—is their uniform thickness and rough-around-the-edges shape, achieved with a rolling pin. Beef chuck with twenty percent fat will produce the juiciest burgers.

The sweet, complex flavor of balsamic vinegar enhances the smokiness of grilled portobellos and bell peppers in these satisfying meatless “burgers.”

FLAVOR BOOSTERS Lean ground turkey is just the start when preparing lower-calorie burgers; these are made supermoist and juicy with the somewhat unexpected addition of reduced-fat sour cream, mango chutney, Dijon, and chili powder; torn pieces of whole-wheat bread help bind the meat as it cooks.

WHY IT’S LIGHT Broiling is a fat-free way to cook salmon burgers; these are perked up with lemon, horseradish, and scallions and served on toasted whole-wheat buns. Yogurt flavored with fresh dill makes a very delicious—and low-fat—topping.

I like ground chuck from grass-fed, pasture-raised beef for hamburgers because of its flavor and its ratio of fat to lean meat.

Burger purists often complain that substituting ground chicken or turkey for beef results in a dry, bland burger, but that needn’t be the case; these are super juicy and full of flavor. To keep them moist, I mix some of the garlic mayo right into the burgers themselves, then smear a bit more on each bun for good measure. Easy and yummy, yummy, yummy.

The burger phenomenon has never really taken hold in Italy, but the flavors in these dainty little sliders would be right at home there. Taleggio is a northern Italian sharp, creamy cheese that keeps the burgers moist and delicious. The heat of the patty melts the cheese and releases the basil’s fresh, herby perfume, making for a decidedly elegant burger experience.

The process for making these salmon burgers is simple as long as you have a food processor. A portion of the salmon is finely ground, almost pureed; the machine takes care of that in about thirty seconds. Then the rest of the fish is chopped, by pulsing the machine on and off a few times. The two-step grinding process means that those flavorings that you want finely minced, like garlic or ginger, can go in with the first batch of salmon; those that should be left coarse, like onion or fresh herbs, can go in with the second batch. The only other trick is to avoid overcooking; this burger, which can be sautéed, broiled, or grilled, is best when the center remains pink (or is it orange?)—two or three minutes per side does the trick.

Of all the powerful ingredients in these burgers— lemongrass, shallots, garlic, chile, and nam pla (called nuoc mam in Vietnamese; see page 500 for information on these Asian fish sauces)—none survives the cooking as well as the lemongrass, whose distinctive scent and flavor override all the others, reducing them to bit players. Lemongrass is changed less by cooking than most seasonings, and this goes for its woody texture too, which is why you remove the tough outer layers. You can grind the tender cores with the meat instead of chopping them if you like. Serve the burgers on rolls, rice noodles, or salad. Other cuts of meat you can use here: ground beef sirloin or chuck, which may be combined with pork if you like.

This is a unique rendition (and spelling) of veal parmigiana that I had in Rigazzi’s, one of the oldest restaurants on The Hill in St. Louis. It exemplifies the frugality and the ingenuity of those early immigrants. Instead of expensive veal cutlets, they ground lesser, tougher cuts of veal, then shaped them and treated them like a veal cutlet; the result was delicious and tender! At Rigazzi’s, it was the special of the day when we visited.