Talked/thought so much about burgers recently I thought I’d try my hand at actually making some. After all, I’ve got the Zuni recipe…that at least gives me a good blueprint. After perusing the web and thinking about what I would want in the perfect burger, I settled on a recipe. To wit: the meat was a three-way mixture of eye of round roast, sirloin tip roast, and short ribs, equal parts of each. The short ribs were salted two days before cooking, the round and sirloin one day before. All three meats were ground in a food processor, then mixed by hand. The patties were seared on the stove, then finished in the oven with a slice of smoked gruyere.

Verdict? Pretty good. Not perfect, but the burgers definitely displayed the effort put into their creation. The salt did come through in the flavor, so I’m glad I presalted. I try to presalt meat as often as I can, and this was simply another lesson in how important that is. The three-meat mix was interesting. The depth of flavor was more pronounced than I thought it would be - it almost took your tastebuds a second to recover after taking a bite. That sounds ridiculous and narcissistic, but that level of richness in the meat wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It sits heavy on ya after a while, and after a whole burger, you feel kinda “ugh.” In the future, I would want to play around with the percentages of the meats a little, and maybe change the meats themselves, too. Eye of round probably isn’t the best meat to mix with the short ribs, another flavor-heavy cut that is dense and usually requires long, slow cooking. Perhaps top round next time.

The other problem was the texture. The burgers were very thick and heavy, which made for a bit of a laborious chewing experience. Why was this? Three reasons: 1) choices of meat - this is probably not as important since the food processor destroys texture, but two of the three meats are very heavy, which tipped the scales a little; 2) the food processor - really, meat should be ground with a meat grinder, not a processor, since the processor can pulverize the meat beyond the necessary level of grind. I don’t own a grinder, but I think I let the meat get a little too chopped up in the ol’ Cuisinart, which made for very small meat particles and led to heavier burgers. Next time, I have to keep a close eye on the meat in the processor, and take it out the moment I can form a patty out of it; and 3) the process of mixing the three meats together required some effort, which further messed with the meat’s texture. Next time I think I’ll try to mix the meats in the blender to save some mixing effort.

So I have a ways to go before I can craft a burger like Sang Yoon or Judy Rodgers. But I felt that it was a good first step, and I look forward to the next one.

We drank most of a bottle of the 2003 Twenty Rows Cabernet Sauvignon with the burgers. This is an okay California cab that you can find for less than $20 most places; we got ours at Silverlake Wine. 2003 wasn’t a great year for California cab, so it wasn’t surprising to note something of a green character to this wine. It had some nice notes of spice on the nose (and what I swore smelled like ketchup - maybe cumin? I dunno…), and dusty, tart berries on the palate. A bitter note on the finish. A workmanlike effort, let’s say, and not nearly as exciting as the 2004 Sandoval Cabernet Sauvignon I picked up last week at Colorado Wine Company on the recommendation of Dr. Debs. No formal notes for that one, but it had great dark fruit and good structure. Well worth seeking out for $13.