Miscellany

The Perfect Burger, Non-Bacon Edition

February 21, 2016

perfect-burger

This is my Blistering Garlic Ranch Burger.

I wish you all could’ve tasted this thing of beauty that I made a few nights ago, because it’s the best burger I’ve ever made. I’ve been tweaking this same burger for the past month or two, and finally got it to perfect burger status.

What You Need

Two frying pans
Butter
Blistering Garlic Salt (link below)
A good hamburger bun
Burger
Red Onion
Lettuce
Tomato
Pickles
Walla Walla Sweet Onion & Creamy Ranch Salad Dressing (link below)

The Bun

This is super important. It can make or break your burger. For years, I’d buy the inexpensive sesame seed buns and make good burgers. About six months ago, I started buying more expensive (and higher quality) buns and my good burgers became great. I tried a few kinds — brioche, ciabatta, etc. — but decided on something you can get at Costco: Pub Buns made by Portland French Bakery. You may have a different favorite bun, and that’s fine.

To make this great bun even better, I use a small frying pan and heat up about 2 tablespoons of butter mixed with this wonderful garlic salt called Blistering Garlic Salt, that you can order online. Seriously, “blistering” is the right word. It’s so spicy that I sneeze if the jar gets too close to my face. You don’t need to use much of this at all to get a fantastic garlic taste.

Anyway, the melted butter and garlic salt are heated on medium until the salt turns brown. At that point, you take both halves of your bun and pat it on the pan to get them covered with this awesome buttery garlic goodness. I did this right when I started cooking the burger, but I might do it last-minute next time to make sure the bun stays a little warmer.

The Burger

The meat is plain — no seasonings or anything mixed in. (Did that with the last batch of ground beef and I just didn’t enjoy the taste as much as plain meat.)

I cook the burger in the same garlic/butter mix that I described above, so that gives the meat all kinds of flavor.

The burger gets topped with one slice of American cheese and one slice of Colby Jack cheese. A couple weeks ago, I added a third slice — cheddar — and that was also really good.

I slice and cook a generous amount of red onion in the pan while the burger is also cooking.

The bun gets a layer of lettuce and a layer of tomatoes. The burger goes on top of that tomatoes. A few sliced pickles go on top of the burger, and then the hot sliced onions. And on top of the onions, I pour this amazing sweet onion and creamy ranch salad dressing.

It’s the best burger I’ve ever made — at least without bacon being involved. So the next experiment is to add bacon to this masterpiece and see what happens, and then tweak and tweak it until I come up with the perfect burger with bacon.

No Comments

Leave a Reply