I have to say I love hamburgers and it is a real pleasure to make a gourmet version for a change. This is a basic hamburger with some gourmet toppings. In this case, crispy bacon, melted Brie and caramelized onions.
First – cook the onions in a cast iron skillet. Set aside when fully caramelized which will take around twenty minutes. Instructions here – How to caramelize onions.
Next cook the bacon and set aside also then, using our simple homemade hamburger recipe, cook the` burgers and add the sliced Brie when nearly cooked.
Now build the burger. Toasted buns, mayo lettuce and tomato.
Add the cooked burgers and top with crispy bacon and caramelized onions. I served these with home made french fries. Heaven.
Filed under Hamburgers by on Jun 10th, 2010. Comment. 
This is an extremely simple technique for caramelizing onions.
- Peel the onions and slice thinly
- Add a little olive oil to a cast iron skillet and heat over medium/low heat
- Add sliced onions and fry for around 30-45 minutes, stirring regularly until done
Add sliced onions to a skillet with a little olive oil
Slow cooking the onions
After around 30-45 minutes, the onions will be sweet and crispy
Filed under Cooking techniques by on Apr 3rd, 2010. 1 Comment.
It seems that reports of the ever expanding “girth” of Americans never seem to end. Every day we are bombarded with stories of how the American waistline is getting larger, and we as a nation are getting sicker as a result. In this age of political correctness there is one restaurant in the South-Western United States that swims against the current. They make no bones about being politically correct.
Chandler is a prominent suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. Their Heart Attack Grill has attracted a lot of controversy for its high calorie menu and marketing strategy. Founded in 2005, its goal is to serve food “so bad for you that it is shocking”, and its motto is “taste worth dying for”. The brainchild behind this establishment, Jon Basso, came up with the idea while he was writing a marketing thesis about fitness training studios (and the clients who cheated on their diets). He calls himself Dr. Jon, but he is not a qualified medical professional.
The Heart Attack Grill is a hospital theme restaurant. Waitresses dress like nurses, and they take orders called “prescriptions” from their customers/patients. Upon ordering their food, a tag is placed upon the patient’s wrist showing everyone what they ordered, and a doctor promptly examines these customers/patients with a stethoscope.
Let’s take a look at the various menu options. Burgers come in “Single”, “Double”, ‘Triple”, and “Quadruple Bypass” sizes (ranging from 0.5 to 2.0 lbs of beef), with the largest comprising a whopping 8000 calories. How much will this set you back? You can get the 8000 calorie monster for about $10.
With the burger taken care of let’s talk about the side dishes. You can add an order of “Flatliner Fries” (cooked in pure lard mind you), and wash it down with a Mexican Coke made with real sugar. When you are done eating you can always relax with one of their non-filtered cigarettes. They refuse to sell diet sodas, but you can get a beer or hard liquor if you like.
Not only has their menu drawn criticism from the health community, they have drawn official complaints for their portrayal of nurses. The Arizona Board of Nursing and the Center for Nursing Advocacy have gone so far as to launch a lawsuit over this depiction.
Their business model seems to be taking off. They are gradually opening up more restaurants.
Why not give their menu a try? You should check with your doctor first though.
Filed under Hamburgers by on Mar 27th, 2010. Comment.
Sausage gravy recipe
Ingredients
- 1 lb link sausages
- 2 tablespoons butter
- ¾ pint milk
- ¼ pint heavy cream
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- dash cayenne pepper
- 2 tablespoons flour
I find combining milk and heavy cream gives a rich taste, but if you only have milk, that works well also. Adjust the amount of pepper to suit your tastes. This will serve two.
First, add the butter to a skillet, turn the heat to medium, melt the butter and add the sausages. Fry the sausages until brown all over.
When the sausages are browned, break them up in to small pieces with a wooden spatula.
Fry the sausages until the pieces are going crispy.
Now, sprinkle in the black pepper and cayenne, fry a few seconds and sprinkle in the flour. Fry this for a minute or so and remove the skillet from the heat.
Now, slowly pour in the milk and cream, stirring all the time until the required thickness is reached. You may need to add a little more or less, depending on how thick you want the gravy.
This was served with homemade buttermilk biscuits and fried eggs.
Filed under Biscuits, Sausages by on Mar 15th, 2010. Comment.
- 2 cups flour
- 4 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 tablespoons shortening
- 1 cup buttermilk, chilled
This is one of my favorite biscuit recipes. Be sure not to knead the dough too much – less is better in this case. It may be a little lumpy, but that is all to the good. Hmm hmm – serve this with sausage gravy and fried eggs for an early but happy heart attack.
How to make American Buttermilk Biscuits:
Preheat oven to 450F, 230C. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a big mixing bowl. Using your fingertips, rub butter and shortening into dry ingredients until mixture looks like crumbs, mixing as fast as possible, before the fats melt. Make a well in the center and pour in the chilled buttermilk. Stir just until the dough comes together. The dough will be very sticky. Turn dough onto floured surface, dust top with flour and gently fold dough over on itself 5 or 6 times. Press into a 1-inch thick round. Cut out biscuits with a 2-inch cutter, being sure to push straight down through the dough. Place biscuits on baking sheet so that they just touch. Reform scrap dough, working it as little as possible and continue cutting. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown.
American Buttermilk Biscuits
Filed under Biscuits, Breakfast Recipes by on Mar 14th, 2010. 1 Comment.
These homemade chicken wings are pretty spicy, but you can tone it down a bit by using less hot sauce in the final coat. Homemade buffalo wings are one of the easiest and most economical recipes in the USA. Making homemade wings is not rocket science, and these bbq chicken wings are so easy you will wonder why you never made them before. These can be prepared well ahead of time and even frozen in between as they need cooking twice. This will make a big batch for a party of 6 people or so. Just increase the ingredients for a larger batch if needed.
Basic ingredients:
- 4 pounds chicken wings
- 2 pints cooking oil (peanut preferred)
- 8 tablespoons Tabasco sauce
- Bowl of seasoned flour – 4 tablespoons of flour and 2 teaspoon salt and pepper each
- 4 tablespoons butter
Cooking directions:
- Fill a cast iron skillet about a third full of peanut oil and heat the oil.
- As the oil is heating, cut the wings into halves.
- Place the wings in the bowl with the seasoned flour and toss.
- When the oil is hot enough to sizzle as the wings are added, start frying the wings in batches until the skin is crispy. Approx 7-8 minutes.
- Place the cooked wings on a paper towel and add more oil to the skillet as needed.
- When all the wings are cooked, this next step can be left until it is time to serve the wings.
- Add the butter and hot sauce to a saucepan and melt the butter into the sauce for around 2 minutes.
- Place the wings in a bowl, pour the sauce over and toss.
- Finish the wings over a charcoal bbq or under a broiler – takes just a few minutes.
- Serve with celery sticks and a blue cheese dip.
If you have ever wondered how to make chicken wings at home, this is the easiest hot wings recipe ever. I prefer to do the final cook on a barbecue, but if you are inside or do not have one, a broiler will work just fine or even 10 minutes in a pre-heated oven.
Filed under Chicken Wings by on Nov 4th, 2009. Comment.
American pancakes differ from most other pancakes in that a raising agent is used. This is a simple, basic recipe for how to make American style pancakes. and is very, very simple.
Basic American pancake mix ingredients:
- 1 ¼ cup buttermilk
- 1 egg
- 1 ½ cup flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ cup castor sugar
- 1/4 cup of vegetable oil
- A pinch of salt
Simple. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl, break the egg in to the dry mix and stir with a fork. Now add the buttermilk and oil and stir with the fork again. Lumpy is not a problem – it will add to the texture. Heat a little vegetable oil or butter in a cast iron skillet and when the oil is hot, pour in a little mixture. You can make them any size from dollar pancakes to full skillet size – the larger ones will take slightly longer to cook.
Cooking time will be around three minutes a side – cook until golden brown. Serve with butter and Maple syrup.
Filed under Pancakes and Waffles by on Oct 31st, 2009. Comment.
How to make hamburgers? Some people like to make things very complicated. I prefer to make them simpler, especially when it comes to homemade hamburgers. What could be more simple than a no frills, nothing but salt and pepper added hamburger? This makes a great homemade hamburger recipe, but flavorful meat is a must. This will make 4 hamburgers. Here we go. Basic ingredients:
- 1 lb ground sirloin steak
- pinch of salt
- dash of pepper
That is it. Nothing else. Use your hands to shape the ground beef into a ball, heat a cast iron skillet on the stove with a splash of oil. When the skillet is hot, add the four balls of ground beef, and using a spatula to squash them flat, cook for around 2 minutes each side depending on how well done you like them. Homemade burgers in under 5 minutes. Seeing as you are cooking them at home you can tell the Government Inc to go screw – and if you like them rare – cook them rare.
I prefer to remove the meat, and then quickly butter the buns and fry them in the skillet until brown – only on the inside of the buns. Serve with lettuce, tomato, a slice of raw onion and mustard and ketchup. Or if the mood takes me, with a dollop of ketchup, and sliced pickles and chopped raw onion. But if you prefer them some other way – then that is the way to serve them.
Filed under Hamburgers by on Oct 30th, 2009. 1 Comment.
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