Burger of the Gods

I have a recipe I like to use for making homemade burgers. It calls for some of this and a little of that and wave my magic wand...and yum-o.

I remembered that Alton Brown had an episode where he made homemade hamburger. I remembered that he 'ground' his own meat, but I could not remember what seasonings he used. A quick trip to the Food Network site and I had his recipe sitting on my tablet (an ASUS Transformer Prime, if you must know). I marveled at it's simplicity. 8 ounces chuck. 8 ounces sirloin. 1/2 teaspoon of salt. That's it. Period. End of conversation.

And it is sublime. Better than my own with all of the special ingredients I add.

Now, what you see in this picture is what I call near perfection. Sadly, I had no pickles or shoe-string onions. This comes as close as I can to recreating Red Robin's Burger Royale. We have mayo, ketchup, mustard. Lettuce, bacon, avocado, and melted Cheddar cheese. Oh...and sitting atop that all is a fried egg. Nomalicious!

I have re-dubbed this: Burger of the Titans




Recipe Link

Shepherds Pie

This being St. Patty's week I had already been making and planning Irish-themed meals. I couldn't remember if Alton Brown had done a recipe for this dish or not. A quick trip to the Food Network site proved he did, in fact, have a recipe for Shepherd's Pie.

Now, the reality is, since I used beef and not lamb, this would technically be a cottage pie and not a Shepherds Pie. But, no matter what you want to call it, I call it Good Eats.

I will try this with lamb. And I will update.

Recipe Link

Cocoa Brownies

By my standard, a brownie is not a brownie if it is cake-like. As far as I am concerned, a brownie should have a consistency more like fudge than like a baked good. Actually, you cannot legally call it a brownie if it's cake like. That would be chocolate cake sans frosting. 

I like Alton Brown's brownies. Though the show recipe and the recipe on Food Network are slightly different (he has you sift all the dry ingredients together on the show while he has you add the sugars only to the eggs at first, then add the rest of the dry goods in the printed version) I went with the one from the show. And, while chocolaty, I think they would be even tastier using dutched chocolate rather than regular cocoa. And honestly, I don't mind testing out a few theories on building the best brownie. Not at all.

Recipe Link

Buttermilk Pancakes

Eat your heart out, IHOP.

Yesterday was "Free Pancake Day" at IHOP. While I did not go, I decided to make some at home instead.

Since having first tried Good Eats pancakes, I have found no other recipe that turns out pancakes that taste as good.



Recipe Link

Avocado Ice Cream

I've been hesitant to try this. Avocado ice cream? Really? But the avocados were cheap at the local megamart, so I figured what the heck. This is your basic premium-styled ice cream, except were substituting avocados for the eggs. And to quote Alton Brown, "it tastes oddly like avocado and that's a good thing."
Would I make it again? I might. But, if I did I'd add a handful of pig candy. But, that's for another blog.

Recipe Link

Sugared Sugar Cookies

So, in following suit with the previous post ( Jam Sammies ) and using Alton Brown's Sugar Cookie recipe as a multipurpose  holiday cookie recipe, I whipped up another batch. This time I used the drop method. I dropped scoops of dough into colored sugar (homemade by my dear daughter), rolled them to coat,  and then placed on a cookie sheet and baked.

AB's recipe has the oven temp at 375° for 7 - 9 minutes, so that's what I did here.  Afterwards, I read a few other sugar cookie recipes and I think the oven temp is too high for this type of cookie. Next time, I'll lower the temp to 350° and bake a bit longer.

Again, a complaint I've found in reviews of Alton Brown's recipe is that the cookies produced are a bit dry. My remedy for that is using superfine sugar. This is easily made by processing the sugar in a food processor.

And that is the final cookie posting of this season.

Jam Sammies

In "The Cookie Clause" episode of Good Eats, the topic is sugar cookies. Alton Brown notes that this is a sort of multipurpose recipe.

The thing about Christmas cookies is you want to come up with just one kind of batter that can make a whole bunch of cookies, okay?

That way you can roll 'em and cut 'em, or make little balls, drop cookies, icebox cookies, make 'em a log and then saw 'em into pieces. And the most versatile cookie dough I know of is sugar cookie dough.

I pondered whether or not I should post these. Technically, they are not listed as an 'official' Good Eats recipe. That being said, I followed the official recipe and only veered by adding the jam filling and sandwiching two cookies together.

For the jam filling, I found a new jam I'd not seen before at Costco: Cherry-Raspberry-Rhubarb. I took a cup of the jam and reduced it for about 20 minutes. I that ran it through a strainer and let it cool.  And there you go.