No updates lately, but that’s not because there has been no news. Just me being lazy. I’ll be better about that stuffs.

In the meantime, as promised to a few people, here is my entry for a “Burger Off” on a message board I frequent, posted here so nobody has to sign up to read it. Enjoy, meater-eaters.

Edited for my site (click pics for larger versions!) -

I went for a more diner/drive-in flavor and incorporated some local ingredients (walla walla onions, local sweet potato, local bakery rolls etc), instead of what he did. Thus making mine BETTA. (vote for me pls!!)

Ingredients:

Lean ground beef (about 1 1/2lbs)
Good steak, your rib-eye or bottom round, something with some fat AND
tender meat (about 1/2lb or so)
1 egg (well, egg white, dump the yolk)
Walla Walla onion
Sweet Potato
Flour
Spices (cumin, red peppers, salt)
1 clove garlic
Iceberg lettuce
Soy Sauce
Worcestershire Sauce
Olive Oil
2 pads non-salted butter
1 tablespoon brown sugar
3 tablespoons flour
Pesto Mayo Relish (1 cup whole egg mayonnaise, 1/4 cup miracle whip, 2
leaves fresh basil, 1 clove garlic, pepper, 1/4 cup chopped onions
9-10 sweet pickles slices - process)

First, you want to marinate the steak in a lemon juice/soy/w. sauce
mix to break down the fat and make the meat really tender. Just toss
it all in a bag and let it sit in the refrigerator while you’re doing
other stuff. Ideally you want to give it at least 2 hours, but if you
get a good cut of meat it doesn’t matter as much.

Next, dice your onions and 1 clove garlic. Add cumin to ground beef
and stir in the onions/garlic. Set in the fridge for now.

Wash and cut the Sweet Potato. 1 good sized potato is about enough for
2 people, make a judgement call. Peel it on your own call too.

Next, mix up 3 tablespoons flour, and gound red peppers/salt/parsley
together, toss all of that in a large ziploc bag with 3-4 tablespoons
of olive oil and shake vigorously for a minute or so. Dump out on
foil-lined pan, toss in oven for 9 minutes (or until golden brown) - flip - cook for 9 more (or until golden brown).

Make your pesto relish sauce - I just tossed it all in the food processor and gave it about 10 seconds of whirrs.

Dice up your lettuce to really fine strips, this way the pesto mayo relish will get in all the grooves and cracks of it and make them tastes nomtastic!

Cut a few slices of onion for saute - throw in pan and add a pad or 2 of butter and a little bit of brown sugar - this is all made to taste so use yours.

Now is time to take the steak out, cut it into thing long strips, then cube those down. We want about the size of your pinky fingernail or so. Once cubed, fold that into your ground beef with the egg whites, making sure it’s mixed nice and good.

Make patties, grill it however you want. I would have Q’d mine, but couldn’t find the lighter fluid. Stove cooking or broiling it in the oven would work good too - there is plenty of flavor in there. I added a local white cheddar, aged 2 years, but only 2 small strips to not overpower it (I wanted to get some comte but the store I was at wanted like 13.99lb and had it already portioned out to way too large for what I needed it for), but any nice sweet cheese would work. A good swiss etc.

Prepare you buns - I’m using a local bakery roll, basically a como. Put pesto on bottom half, honey mustard on top, lettuce on pesto, you can grill the buns lightly too for flavor (I did the other one I made not pictured here that way).

Time to plate. I would use a nice ketchup with a little lime spritzed in for the fries, but plain ketchup would work too.

That’s pretty much it. NOM.