Today, Praew and I made burgers for dinner. For those of you who don’t know already, we opened up a sandwich and burger restaurant downstairs at the office. So this wasn’t just dinner, it was research, too.

I made a double-decker cheese burger with two patties of 50-50 mixed sirloin steak and beef shank ground up and then seasoned with salt and pepper, rolled up into 100g balls and then smashed into a pan heated to 250C and pressed there until it was done cooking. The pressing maximizes the brown crust but also presses out more of the fat and juices. So to compensate for the loss of moisture, I added a slice of jalapeno jack cheese between the patties. On top of the patties, I added onions, sliced jalapenos, tomatoes, pickles, ketchup and lettuce. All of this is on a freshly baked sourdough bun lightly spread with butter and grilled at the same time as the patties. Then, the buns were lightly spread with mayonnaise on the bottom one and wholegrain mustard on the top one. (Straight out of the oven! We started frying the patties before the buns were done baking.)

It is stacked up so high, I had to support it with my fingers from the moment the bun was placed on top up to the point the last juice bites slipped into my mouth. Next time I will try using 50g patties… I rather expected it to shrink more as the juices squeezed out during cooking. But then again, that is what experimenting is for. 🙂
(And despite the difficulty eating it, it sure was tasty!)

And to think that I used to be a vegetarian for many years and still don’t eat very much meat. There might be more meat in this burger than I normally eat in a typical week.

Praew, who doesn’t eat beef, went with a single ground chicken patty and lightly grilled the onions.