Monday, June 03, 2013

Food: Burgers

OK, buy some cheap beef mice [OMG should say mince!], the fattier the better. There's 600g in six completed burgers here. Add about 100g of grated cheddar cheese, extra mature. One whole egg binds it nicely. Include one very small onion, very finely chopped. Now here's the dangerous bit. You can add salt AND pepper. Oh oh, that old "one spice two spice" obesogenic effect, could be in trouble here.

Now here's the next trick: Instead of making the usual six burgers, make 12 very thin burgers. Put a decent square of feta cheese in the middle of one burger, cover with a second one, squish the edges to make one double thickness burger, enclosing the feta. Make six double thickness feta-enclosing burgers.

Now. Burn them. AGE the surface... Glycate those amino acids over glowing charcoal.



Two is more than enough, for me anyway. I don't care how good they taste, I manage two and have pigged out. I guess polishing off the left over feta during preparation may have something to do with this!

We have a plan to add shredded tarragon or fennel leaves to the next batch. Salt, pepper AND a herb. Livin' dangerously here.

Sorry for no chance to reply to emails or comments. Too busy barbecuing after a heavy weekend on call.

Peter

39 comments:

praguestepchild said...

OK, buy some cheap beef mice

Between your predilection for humor, your many posts about rodent studies, the fact that you are a vet, and the fact that I'm American in origin, it took me a while to figure out 'mice' was a typo for 'mince'.

Beth said...

Sounds *so* yummy! I need to try this someday. :-)

Beth

Kindke said...

cooking meat on charcoal is a lost art. Those burnt bits taste amazing, as does meat that has been directly cooked in the flame.

Lowcarb team member said...

BBQ's are great and home made burgers served with a salad is good food for me

All the best Jan

Ned Kock said...

Mice - the cats are running the shown at Peter's.

horfilmania said...

You've given me an idea with your beef-mice. With the overpopulation of rats and/or mice in the world, they could be an alternative food source. Probably taste a bit like chicken.

I use grated parmesan cheese instead of feta, but I'll try your version next. And where's the garlic?

Blot said...

Bulgarian sheep-milk feta is the best I can find in my part of the US. I will definitely try this with some. Domestic cow-milk feta just isn't as good.

Unknown said...

I've tried this using Stilton cheese in the middle. Delicious!

Sondra Rose said...

Meow!

Unknown said...

Burgers with the cheese inside are a regional specialty in Minneapolis. We call them the Jucy Lucy. They're my favorite form of burger.

Blot said...

Supposedly invented or re-invented in Rochester, MN within walking distance of the Mayo Clinic - or so they claim in Rochester. Who knows.

Unknown said...

That would be a fantastic dish to serve along side rat kabobs. I've always wondered what they would taste like, but never got the nerve to go through with it at the end of each rat study in my lab. Ah well.

I'm thinking AHS14 in Scotland, and Peter can be the grill master.

Peter said...

OMG, not quite a Freudian slip but.....

Peter

Galina L. said...

I made less exciting pan-fried beef patties, and I added to the meat onion, garlic, raw egg and beef brains. Right now I can enjoy food markets in my native Moscow, where farmers roll their eyes when I ask them about the feed for their cattle. Grain is so expensive, that they have to feed cows with grass alone. I bought and freeze for my mom a year supply of a yellow early summer butter.
Peter, what do you think about the danger of eating brains?

Anonymous said...

" Salt, pepper AND a herb. Livin' dangerously here."

Having just come back from France and eaten foie gras plus butter in everything, and taken photos of patisserie windows (a hobby of mine) I really can't understand how anyone with a French-sounding name can believe in the food reward of obesity. Unless they've never actually been to France? The large majority of French people that I saw were wisp thin.
The burgers sound great!

Ash Simmonds said...

I did pretty much this a month ago - utterly sublime.

Taryl said...

Oh oh, they sound SO good!

Nigel Kinbrum said...

Can I smell food?

Did someone mention food?

'Cos my neighbours down the road 'ent 'aving a barbie! *ouch*

Sounds yummy. I think that I'll go into the kitchen now and cook some meat 'n veg in the microwave incinerator. Cheers!

Anonymous said...

Oh oh, that old "one spice two spice" obesogenic effect, could be in trouble here.

Spice restriction + rabbit starvation = optimal weight loss diet according to we know who. Get with the programme, Peter.

James said...

Coincidentally, there was an article in the WSJ today entitled ``Vegetarians Live Longer Than Meat-Eaters, Study Finds``. Im posting it in the comments section so the debunkers can do their thing. In the meantime Ill be enjoying BBQ`d meat and the nice spring weather!




http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324423904578523190441042514.html?mod=trending_now_1

ItsTheWooo said...

one spice, two spice, lab mice, dinner mice
*YUM*

I love bbq; I was saying the other day my new house has an oven that seems to barbeque food when you broil it because it makes super high flames. It's like barbeque every day I broil.

Exceptionally Brash said...

omg I was just thinking of these burgers, after buying a tub of feta cubes packed in brine. I wanted them just as much for the whey. Now I want to put the cubes inside a turducken

Unknown said...

I just looked outside my window in London and, amazingly, it's still sunny. I love the look of your recipe and probably have three more days of barbecue weather to master it!

Stipetic said...

Galina, I had goat brains over the Easter holidays (Greek Easter). Definitely an acquired taste, or maybe I should have heeded the advice to add salt and pepper to it, and a squeeze of lemon juice. But you've given me a great idea as to how I can add brains more regularly to my diet. We have a butcher down the road who sell (water) buffalo meat, which is the only large cattle that is grass fed and finished (in Europe, all beef is slaughtered when still at veal age, so they have to be fatten with grain for it to be profitable). But not for buffalo.

Buffalo and brain burgers with cheddar and feta (and eggs) and spices. Maybe a little mince liver for good measure? I'm salivating already.

Galina L. said...

The patties with brain turned very succulent.
Many years ago a native Bulgarian told me that they considered Feta cheese in a brine a product suitable for a long strage, but in order to turn it into a product suitable for eating they took Feta from the brine and placed it in a plain water for a while, and continued to keep in the same water (which turned slightly salty, and the cheese milder and more smooth in a texture) till it was eaten, and I followed such practice since then. In my family we also mix Feta cheese with butter (almost half/half), garlic, black pepper and herbs, poll it in a parchment and keep it in a refrigerator.
I wouldn't mix liver with a regular meat, but I remember eating deep-fryed chicken patties stuffed with a liver pate in a restaurant. Sometimes I staff my beef paties with sauteed onion mixed with chopped hardboiled eggs (or mushrooms). May be I will try to add chopped raw lever into the staffing some day.

Gabriella Kadar said...

At Costco a person can obtain Epiros Greek Feta (the real deal). It is NOT made from cow milk. Also, so far it's the absolutely best feta I have ever eaten.

Please, leave some for me, nuh.

karl said...

@james and vegetarians

If the science is robust, my first hunch is they get less PUFA's without the corn fed beef, eggs, chickens, pork.

Wish I had the actual paper.. ??

Not listed on JAMA Internal Medicine web site?..

Des said...

Use brisket passed through the mincer 3 times - helps to develop the myosin and this make the meat sticky - add salt and pepper.

James said...

@Karl:

The link to the JAMA webpage is here:

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1691919

I have access through my university if you want the pdf.

James

pil666 said...

always thought that burgers are ok to eat, what can go wrong with tomato, lettuces and pickles?

check out how you can shed those extra pounds Click skinny fiber results

Puddleg said...

@ James, vegans and vegetarians live a bit longer for a very good reason - you have to be bloody tough from the get-go to survive on that diet, and you need to abstain from drink, drugs, and promiscuous sex to prosper. And if you don't thrive, you can just go back to meat, like the Dalai Lama.
If Vegans were chosen at random and forced to follow that diet, they would drop like flies, but because it's optional, they can pretend like it's healthy.

SS Biker said...

@GH

So true, in my experience there are two types of (Committed, long term) Vegetarians. The true health believers, rake thin, pale with delicate bones and the other sort pale, fat and often diabetic. The latter love their alcohol, fags and veg fats as well as all things starchy and fibrous. The less annoying sort but much shorter lived (unfortunately).

shtove said...

Just tried Des' suggestion for brisket.

Chopped meat into cubes and whizzed it in the processor for 10secs x 2, then just added salt & pepper (no need for egg to bind) and made burgers. Much better than mince.

If you freeze the processor container for 20 mins beforehand and process the brisket straight from fridge the clean up is easy.

James said...

@GH and O Numnos

True. In my experience most vegans/vegetarians I come across are super health oriented (at least in terms of what they consider healthy). Funny too how alot of vegans/vegetarians think that they avoid all the risks of this diet by simply supplementing with B12. A lack of creatine, lipoic acid, and CoQ10 might be detrimental long term.



Richard Nikoley said...

Peter, my hero. Sorry for the off-topic distraction but wanted to make sure it got to you given that spam filters are like TSA, now.

I've emailed you a bit of a veteranarian puzzle in the midst of interesting recovery dynamics that vets here call "Old Dog Vestibular Syndrome."

Given that you gave me permission way back to blog about how you helped me with Rotor's EPI, I went ahead and finally blogged the whole thing.

http://freetheanimal.com/2013/06/dog-shit-enzymatic-pancreatic-deficiency-epi-and-old-dog-vestibular-syndrome.html

...I like that you know that everyone thinks you're about the coolest dude alive, but give zero indication of knowing it.

Brad Reid said...

Peter, I suppose it is your profession that makes me think, that you and perhaps others here, would find this sort of interesting. Tracking the movements of cats with some interesting graphics, then too, the statistics of some of their hunting habits and ranges. One cat in the group eschewed all cat food and lives exclusively off of prey. Sort of cool anyway. Way off topic. Brad Reid Fort Worth, TX

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22567526

D1S said...

wumy burgers Peter, btw livin dangerously?... i still drink 1L of milk + sucrose + your diet - cream... not dead yet... in fact still fkn ripped, must be the cold lolz

Unknown said...

I'm soo happy reading this blog. I just ditched a San Francisco State University Nutrition class. It took me 2 vidoe lectures to realize that it was going to be the same, tired dogma of allopathic origin.
I've come from there and I'm not going back.

I wish you had time to offer a class on Coursera.com.
It would be brain health, sanity, memory recover and over-all optimum health!!! My last class had 74,448 people in it from around the world.

Just my 2 cents. No matter what ...thank you for being here.

Hugs from Ca,
Karen

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