Hack Shack experiment 02 August, 2010

Chicken is the predominately featured meat in the Jaynes household, erhm, Apartment. Don't get me wrong, we're not vegetarians or anything. I'd call us flexitarians because I love a good hamburger. The problem with going out to get a hamburger is the sheer size of what is placed in front of you. You wind up leaving the place full of half a cow and self loathing. Luckily, some unsung hero invented the slider.

The slider, depending on your size, is a bite-size hamburger. It's really the perfect solution to the Minetta Hamburger that is the size of your head. We decided to take the Hack-Shack recipe from Serious Eats and Wayne Szalinski'd it down to a bite size morsal. After much experimenting, Serious Eats came up with a comparable recipe for the meat used in the Shack Shake Burgers, which are delicious and reasonably sized. Having just eaten one--friends were in town--I have to say the meat blend is a pretty close approximation. Unfortunatly our apartment doesn't have Abita Rootbeer on tap, which goes a long way to making the Shake Shack experience.

At the risk of becoming one of those food blogs here is the process:

For the meat we went to our awesome butcher and asked him to grind up:
1/2lb of Sirloin
1/4lb of Chuck
1/4lb of Brisket

This is the ratio that serious eats suggests, and it suited us just fine. We formed them into little patties and seasoned them with salt & pepoer, aren't they cute?

We didn't get fancy with the seasoning because we wanted the meat to speak for itself, and it did. The next tricky step was where do we get mini buns? And even if we find them bun quality really makes a hamburger. The ratio of bun to meat is also important. After a little Googling I ran across Martin's Potato Dinner Rolls. Picked some up at Key Food, and tried one on the walk back. Problem solved.

I toasted them quickly on the griddle, and added onions while getting the meat ready.

Then, in lieu of the proper grill, we plopped the patties on a well seasoned, hot griddle.

I cooked mine for 2-3 minutes on each side, then moved them to a slightly cooler area of the griddle--I prefer mine medium-rare. Carla on the other hand likes her's similar to charcoal briquettes. After we burned hers we placed the patties on the buns with ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, spinach, and onion.

We had a side of fresh corn too. Shucked, and placed in boiling water for a few minutes.

Don't let the size fool you these little beauties will fill you up! I actually couldn't finish mine, but they fit perfectly in our tupperware for lunch the next day.