Then don’t read this post. Or if you’re somehow compelled to read this post, against your will and in defiance of everything that you believe to be beautiful and true in this world, maybe keep in mind that you don’t have to leave a comment about how tired you are of reading about hamburgers. I know, life is hard and sometimes infuriating.
I am an American, and therefore hamburgers are part of my natural diet. I’m being flip, but what I’m about to type is absolutely true, you can ask my mom: My first word was an attempt at asking for water, “wadoo,” and my second word was an attempt at saying hamburger, “hammo.” I was a loveable, healthy kid, but there’s a reason my parents affectionally referred to me as porky pig for a couple years at the beginning there.
Since then, I’ve grown. My tastes have diversified and my thighs are not as wide as I am tall, anymore. I do, however, continue to love hamburgers and have been known to utter, Homer Simpson like, “Mmmh, hammos.”
My boyfriend has learned to love and accept me for who I am, and for Christmas even presented me with a meat grinder. My eyes lit up like I’d just opened a cheap velvet box from Zales. “I’m going to build a hamburger, and it’s going to be made with the finest meats,” I vowed.
We bought ribeyes from Robertson’s. I wanted to throw in some oxtail for added fat, but I wasn’t on grocery buying duties that day, and Matt thought oxtails sounded like a strange request, so our first and only attempt thus far was made with only the ribeye meat. That turned out to be more than adequate, the meat was still juicy.
While the meat was stellar, I was a bit too narrowly focused, and settled on hamburger buns from Tesco. They are not fantastic, but they do the job. Next time, I’m thinking about baking our own.
I cut both steaks up into cubes before I fed them into the meat grinder, which I have dubbed Hammo.
The exciting first moments when we realize, yes, this just might work:
Look at Hammo go! Porky Pig takes the helm:
I didn’t want to get too fancy, I mixed in minced onions, salt and pepper. I was also careful not to be too rough with the meat so it wouldn’t be packed into a meat mushball.
I made indentations in the middle, so they came out of the pan with a uniform width. That’s processed cheese you see there. Maybe you’re having an apoplectic fit right now, indignant that a self-styled “food critic” would be so gauche as to use such a lowly cheese. You can take your gouda, your gorgonzola and your halloumi, and you know what you can do with your fancy pants cheese? You can stuff it. Go make an artisanal panini. American cheese slices turn into a gooey cheese goo, and it was created in heaven by God, on the eighth day when he said “Let there be cheeseburgers.”
These hamburger patties were amazing. You’ll note there are no other accoutrements. I do love onions, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and other toppings on my hammos, but I was so excited to taste this meat that everything else went out the window. I ate two of them. I smiled the entire time. I gazed lovingly into my boyfriend’s eyes and whispered, “Merry Christmas, baby.” He looked at me like I’d turned into a monster. A hammo monster.
Čau Down
