blue cheese mushroom hamburger

Today I went for my weekly grocery shopping. This is a rare occasion that the shopping list have mostly ingredients for Western recipes. This is because of the 1/4 cow that I purchase, and that it happened that I have been wanting to make duck confit.


Last night I took out a duck and a pack of hamburger meat from the chest freezer. I planned to use up the hamburger meat first as the duck will take more time to thaw, marinate, and then cook.

It has been a very long time since I purchase hamburger meat. That was when I was in college. At the very rare occasion when I needed minced beef I would just grind it myself. My past venture of hamburger making has been less than stellar. I used to grill the meat in a gas barbecue. Since I figured out my problem with cooking steaks hamburger should now be a snap. I will sear it in a cast iron pan.

When I was in college I spent a good part of winter hanging out in Key West. There was this one evening I went to a restaurant by the water. I had this hamburger topped with blue cheese and saute mushroom and it was the best burger I'd ever had. I had no idea blue cheese would transform a rather boring sandwich.

I would make a blue cheese hamburger. I prepared a shopping list for the ingredients for the hamburger and the duck confit.

For the hamburger buns I was thinking of something toothsome, like Kaiser buns. I do not like the typical air-filled hamburger bun for my hamburger. Since I only want to go shopping at Costco and the Winco near it I limited my choice of buns to what I can find there. I knew my chance of finding decent bun is better at Costco than at Winco so I planned to settle on the closest thing to what I had in mind. I came home with these demi baguettes. They are quite substantial. I cut one into two halves so a small hamburger patty will fit nicely in each.
demi baguette from Costco - it is fresh from the oven today

i wanted some good blue cheese - i bought this big tub from Costco; it ought to last me for all the hamburger meat in the freezer

freezer full of packages of beef from the 1/4 cow

the duck and the pack of hamburger meat i took out to thaw

seems to be a good balance of lean meat and fat - i just rough guess on the amount to make two medium size patties

i saw this bundle of beets for $1.89 it was a no-brainer purchase; would eat from root to stem to leaves

i used all the stems and the leaves and one beet for this pot of beef stock - i love the beautiful stain of the beets

something with such beautiful color has to be good for you

 saute some onion with garlic - this would be used to mix with the burger meat

 saute some mushroom with garlic and season with pepper and salt - this would be used to build the final hamburger sandwich

the saute onion is mixed into the hamburger patties - you always want to flatten the patties a bit more as the diameter would contract during cooking; and yes i also cooked two strips of bacon too

I also made some mayonnaise from scratch and blended in some Dijon mustard. I don't buy mayonnaise anymore as I rarely use it.
the hamburger ready to be assembled - i don't care for iceberg lettuce in my burger; i skip the tomato too as it make a mess with a already very tall burger; i do like some finely sliced yellow onion to give some zing

so there is a slice of bacon, mayonnaise mixture, some sliced raw yellow onion, saute mushroom, and the hamburger patty with melted blue cheese on top; the stack is so tall i have to compress the finished burger hard with my hand so the stack would stay together

 

omg! it is one bad arse burger

 this is the second one; i remember to get some parsley from the garden

The blue cheese is quite sharp as I hoped. It really adds a lot of character to the sandwich. The saute onion in the patties make them very moist and added a nice balance of sweetness. And for the bacon - everything is better with bacon right? This is a rare occasion I eat bacon.
If you ask me to choose between the porterhouse steak or this hamburger I would have difficulty choosing the steak. The hamburger is that good and yet cost less.