Niman Ranch Burgers with Caramelized Onions
- By Katie Roche
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- 26 Mar, 2019
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Turning the page to see burgers on the agenda for the blog was like a sigh of relief. Burgers? I've totally got this. And then I realized that, in true Ina fashion, she literally calls for beef from a SPECIFIC CATTLE RANCH. I looked into this cattle ranch. There are pictures of the animals grazing happily and stuff. I really shouldn't have looked because then it made me sad to think about eating them. I didn't actually eat any of Niman Ranch's cattle. I ate a nameless, faceless cow who gave its life to become the ground chuck they sell at Ole Timey. I was accused by a coworker of not being dedicated enough to track down Niman Ranch beef. Dan did ask the butcher if they sold it and they don't. The only other place you might be able to get it around here is to have it delivered by Amazon Fresh, but they didn't have any available to our zip code. The rest of the ItemQuest was for onions (for the caramelized onion bit), English muffins for the bun component, and mayonnaise because we were out.
Dan came home from the store with the mayonnaise declaring he had something controversial to share. His controversial proclamation was that, after consulting the ingredients of each, he believes that Duke's mayonnaise is actually just Miracle Whip. Duke's mayonnaise is a point of pride for South Carolinians, and for inexplicable reasons as the rest of the country long ago agreed that Best Foods/Hellmann's is the only mayonnaise. I would try Duke's but I don't need to because I can buy Hellmann's. Anyway, Miracle Whip was a banned substance in my house growing up, along with ketchup, casseroles, spaghetti, and anything else my dad deemed "prison food"...so, basically anything that can be produced in mass quantities to feed a large group of people. As a result of this, I struggle to feed crowds as an adult, and actually had to learn the "right way" to make spaghetti for my Italian husband when I was already well into my 20s. I'm getting off topic. He thinks Duke's and Miracle Whip are the same. South Carolinians, weigh in if you wish, but know that you will not be changing our minds. Hellmann's or nothing, this is non-negotiable.
Dan came home from the store with the mayonnaise declaring he had something controversial to share. His controversial proclamation was that, after consulting the ingredients of each, he believes that Duke's mayonnaise is actually just Miracle Whip. Duke's mayonnaise is a point of pride for South Carolinians, and for inexplicable reasons as the rest of the country long ago agreed that Best Foods/Hellmann's is the only mayonnaise. I would try Duke's but I don't need to because I can buy Hellmann's. Anyway, Miracle Whip was a banned substance in my house growing up, along with ketchup, casseroles, spaghetti, and anything else my dad deemed "prison food"...so, basically anything that can be produced in mass quantities to feed a large group of people. As a result of this, I struggle to feed crowds as an adult, and actually had to learn the "right way" to make spaghetti for my Italian husband when I was already well into my 20s. I'm getting off topic. He thinks Duke's and Miracle Whip are the same. South Carolinians, weigh in if you wish, but know that you will not be changing our minds. Hellmann's or nothing, this is non-negotiable.
I had my hands in a lot of food-pies at this point. I sent Dan out to preheat the grill (he/we are #teamcharcoal if anyone was wondering - I don't have a strong opinion necessarily but he LIVES to research things so he went to town when it was time to buy a grill and that's what he decided) and I started caramelizing the onions. I am super impatient about things like this so it took a lot for me to actually keep the heat at medium low and LEAVE THEM ALONE. Next to my caramelizing onions, you see a sheet pan of "pfeffernusse" fresh out of the oven. I had made the dough the day before, and because you roll and slice them in very small pieces, I needed an hour or so to actually get all of them baked. So I was simultaneously cooking onions, slicing and baking a million tiny cookies, and also mixing a meringue buttercream for some cupcakes. I'm proud to say that, although my mom was skeptical about whether I'd ever master the art of having everything I'm cooking get done at once, I have indeed mastered that. In this case, it kind of screwed me over; the burgers came off of the grill, the meringue buttercream got done whipping, another batch of cookies finished up in the oven, and my onions got done cooking ALL AT THE SAME TIME. I don't think that was what my mom had in mind, but for the five seconds before I panicked realizing I needed to deal with all of those things, I felt like a kitchen superhero. Put me on Chopped. I can freaking MULTITASK.
I've gotten ahead of myself again. Into the ground chuck went some olive oil, Dijon mustard, and salt and pepper. Pretty strange mix of ingredients for a burger...I wasn't *surprised* that Ina says to add more fat (olive oil) to meat that's already 80/20 but I kinda was. Ya know? As for the Dijon, I looked at a few online recipes and this is apparently a very normal addition to burger patties. Growing up, my mom only used Worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, salt, and pepper on burgers. I'm a big fan of Dijon so I saw this going places. In her description of the recipe, Ina calls this an "American classic with the volume turned wayyyy up" which caused Dan to disgustedly be like, "Why does she always have to 'turn the volume up'?"
I used my kitchen scale to form in the meat into equal-sized patties. I'm aware that a normal person would just eyeball it. I am not a normal person.
How *supercute* is my Grill Master though?
Patties went about 4 minutes per side for medium-rare, and I will now testify that rare or medium-rare are the only two acceptable ways for meat to be cooked. This is a real heart-hospitality struggle for me. Deep down, I know the RIGHT thing to do is to ask a guest how they like their meat cooked. But the opinionated part of me (and, let's be honest, my opinions might be bigger than my heart, idk) just wants to cook the meat for the guest the way it should be cooked and if they don't like it, they can stand in their shame at the microwave and listen to it go 'round in circles of ruin while it overcooks. It's especially hard with things like big cuts of meat where a consensus is somewhat necessary. The gracious thing, again, is to cook it how others like it. But we grew up eating our meat straight up rare, and even medium-rare is a concession for me. If I had free rein to make rules for my guests, I think the most important two would be 1) never ask for ketchup and 2) eat the medium-rare meat. The first one is kind of a non-issue as I don't even keep ketchup in stock. Oh you're a ketchup-dipper? Glad to be made aware that you're a MONSTER but the ketchup-dipping stops right here, right now where the food has flavor and doesn't need sugar-tomato-paste to redeem it. Lest any of you worry that I, like Dan says of my parents, am a "food fascist", I think Dan eats ketchup with his fries when we're out places. I hate this.
The English muffins went on the grill for a couple of minutes and then everything was ready to assemble.
Dan portrait-moded his burger. I feel like it's actually hard to take a beautiful picture of this burger, particularly because there isn't a lot of color - no greens or anything. But I like this picture because it kind of captured the essence of the kitchen at that point: busy. Cookies resting on the counter, burgers done, me slicing butter into tablespoon-sized chunks to add to my meringue. I love a busy kitchen.
Dan's thoughts on the burger were that he didn't like my choice of Dijon mustards (I like the grainy kind and he said he kept "hurting his teeth on the chunks", #dramaqueen) and that the caramelized onions kind of overpowered the rest of the burger. He also said that he was pleasantly surprised by how much he liked having an English muffin as a bun, because they're less dense than typical burger buns and "let the rest of the burger shine". (Has he been watching too much Chopped?) My thoughts: I stand by my Dijon choices always and forever, caramelized onions can overpower whatever they'd like because they're THAT DELICIOUS, and I, too, was pleasantly surprised by how good of a bun an English muffin makes. These were crappy grocery store English muffins too, so imagine if I...LOL..."turned the volume way up" and made my own next time? I've heard making English muffins is actually a nightmare, and I'm not the most ambitious when it comes to homemade bread products, but perhaps I'll give it a try. The actual flavor of the burger was honestly AMAZING and Dan and I both agreed that we would make them this way again. Maybe next time we'll actually hit up Niman Ranch, all the heck over in Bolinas, CA, and shoot our own cow grazing in the fields before grinding it into beef for burgers. But if not...say it with me, you know this by now...store-bought will be fine.
Dan's thoughts on the burger were that he didn't like my choice of Dijon mustards (I like the grainy kind and he said he kept "hurting his teeth on the chunks", #dramaqueen) and that the caramelized onions kind of overpowered the rest of the burger. He also said that he was pleasantly surprised by how much he liked having an English muffin as a bun, because they're less dense than typical burger buns and "let the rest of the burger shine". (Has he been watching too much Chopped?) My thoughts: I stand by my Dijon choices always and forever, caramelized onions can overpower whatever they'd like because they're THAT DELICIOUS, and I, too, was pleasantly surprised by how good of a bun an English muffin makes. These were crappy grocery store English muffins too, so imagine if I...LOL..."turned the volume way up" and made my own next time? I've heard making English muffins is actually a nightmare, and I'm not the most ambitious when it comes to homemade bread products, but perhaps I'll give it a try. The actual flavor of the burger was honestly AMAZING and Dan and I both agreed that we would make them this way again. Maybe next time we'll actually hit up Niman Ranch, all the heck over in Bolinas, CA, and shoot our own cow grazing in the fields before grinding it into beef for burgers. But if not...say it with me, you know this by now...store-bought will be fine.
For this post, I wanted to combine two summertime flavors into the crisp recipe one of my oldest Alaskan friends passed on to me years ago. Rhubarb, if you're unfamiliar, is a reddish stalk that kind of resembles really big celery. It's very tart and is most commonly paired with strawberry. I've rarely seen it star in its own show dessert-wise, but my friend Kylee has been making rhubarb crisp for years and it's the best crisp I know of. Blueberries are usually in season in late summer; I have not been home for a blueberry season since Dan's last deployment in 2018 so in order to make this recipe I actually used blueberries from a friend's parents' farm in upstate SC! They're a little sweeter than the blueberries I'd have picked at home, but they worked well. I'm going to pretend like I was actually picking blueberries at home in Alaska for the purpose of showing you what that would look like.
I was getting all ready to write this post, going through my process with photos starting in my kitchen when I realized that a lot of my friends probably don't know what fireweed is or where it comes from and this recipe actually starts far, far away from my kitchen. This will be the first of a few posts highlighting iconic Alaskan ingredients. I've wanted to do this for a while because my home inspires me in so many ways, writing and cooking particular among them. Fireweed is a wildflower that is rather ubiquitous in southcentral Alaska and is often considered a gauge for how long summer will last. It is said that when the blooms reach the top of the plant, winter is six weeks away. Whether or not that's accurate, fireweed is found all over in late summer in Alaska. Here is some I spotted in mid-July by Eklutna Lake:
If you know Dan and me very well, you probably know by now that if our life were a sitcom, he'd low-key be the funniest character. Because that is true, I thought I'd include his bottom ten with accompanying remarks before giving the actual bottom ten. His are hilarious, but aren't as legitimate as mine because he actually tried way fewer of these than one might think. I realized as he was flipping through the book that my old coworker Cam probably ate more of these foods than anyone else did. The overarching theme of Dan's song of Ina Garten hatred is not the actual taste of the finished product but more how asinine he finds that particular recipe to be. So here you are, Dan's bottom ten.
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
#1: Butternut Squash Soup
You guys asked for my top ten from the blog, so here we go! And I'm thinking that what you *really* want is actually the bottom ten, so I'll go ahead and give you those next week. That post will probably be A LOT funnier. While preparing to write this post, I had Dan flip through the cookbook to give me HIS top ten and he was all disgruntled as he did so and only came up with eight that he even liked at all. "I'm not a picky eater!" he insists. Yeah ok. Although to be fair, I've seen some cookbooks I would only make, like, one thing out of and plenty I'd make nothing out of, though sometimes that's because I find the chef so annoying. @ the Pioneer Woman. I just don't trust someone who puts sour cream in spaghetti and then bakes it. Plus all her recipe intros are about, like, Ladd or Tadd or whatever the heck her husband's name is "coming in from the fields starving for dinner". If I came in from working in a field and you tried to give me sour cream spaghetti, I'd be like, "How about a hot pocket instead? Thx." Anyway, this is not Dan's blog so these are not his top ten. You can ask him which ones he liked, but you'll end up in a long convo about how much he hates Ina Garten. Anyway, these are not ranked or anything, they're just in order from the cookbook.
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
So with that, #1: Juice of a Few Flowers
It was Sunday afternoon and I thought to myself, "What a perfect time to make jam!" I mean, how positively quaint: just sitting in my home in suburbia, finished with weekend chores, relaxing with some knitting...why not? Why not make some jam? I mean, obviously my afternoon-kitchen-activity was directed toward jam-making because it was next up in the book BUT whatever, I was kind of excited! Also, this is the last recipe in this book!!! I'm still in the process of deciding what I'll do now, so if there's something you'd like me to make and tell you about in my own fashion - you know, with lots of tangents and jokes - please do let me know! I'll likely continue to tackle Ina content, but may start including some recipe faves and/or foods people text me about a lot! I get a lot of cake questions, a LOT of frosting questions (because meringue buttercream is bae and I've got everyone in my social circles who eats my food on board), and a lot of fish questions. So look for more food to come, even though this is the last recipe in Back to Basics.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
We went to Publix to ItemQuest for this and Dan said, "Don't we already have strawberries???" And I had to confess that I had eaten them all because it's honestly amazing how good fruit can be when it's 1) in season, 2) somewhat local, and 3) not ludicrously expensive. I'm about to travel home to Alaska for about a month, and it's going to put a real damper on my current fruit-snacking habits when I go into Fred Meyer for some strawbs and they're like, $7/lb and already trying to be moldy. Also needed blueberries (partly for the jam, mostly for the snax), one Granny Smith apple, and more superfine sugar. Publix had all of these things, plus about a million old people 'cause Sunday + Publix = Old People City.
I was glad Ina gave me something easy for this week, because I was packing for Alaska and just *did not have the time* to mess with hunting lobsters or weird cheeses from the internet or whatever. ItemQuest was fairly straightforward, just took Dan a trip to the liquor store next to the Publix for some limoncello. I grabbed this particular lemon curd in the British aisle of Publix; I think last time an Ina recipe called for lemon curd I bought it from Trader Joe's and it was DISGUSTING. I mean, truly awful. I would like to recommend making your own lemon curd if you have the time and the inclination. Ina's lemon curd recipe is phenomenal and it is one thing for which I can say she is truly correct: homemade is BETTER and store-bought is not at all as good. The most beloved cupcakes I have ever made were filled with Ina's lemon curd, and had the lemon curd mixed into the meringue buttercream frosting. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!! Anyway, the rest of this was fruit that I had on hand, mint, and Greek yogurt which we did have to buy because I don't, as a rule, eat Greek yogurt of my own free will. It's chalky and disgusting.
Dates are something I honestly never even thought about until I did Whole 30. I have mentioned my Whole 30 experience several times over the course of this journey through Back to Basics, but if you're new to reading the blog, this is what happened: I did Whole 30 one time, just to prove that I could, because salvation-by-diet apologists were obsessed with it as the newest fad in righteous eating practices. It was a terrible experience; on top of hating every minute of it for myself and finding exactly zero wellness benefits, I also hated it for Dan who was not allowed to eat popcorn for 30 days. Dan is in love with popcorn; his addiction to it is almost at the level of my addiction to coffee. He gets rage-y without it. But anyway, Whole 30 recipes are big into dates as sweeteners and some of the things you can eat, like Lara Bars, are made with dates. Dates are impossibly chewy. I ate more of them in that 30 days than I ever wanted to, and now when I see them in recipes I can't help but think of that Whole 30. Fortunately for me, I got to begin this recipe by chopping TWO CUPS' worth of dates. Oh, they also kind of look like cockroach bodies, so there's that. The only thing I actually had to get at the store for this was oranges! I had everything else on hand, even Cointreau, thanks to many previous Ina recipes.
Alright so, I'm not the Muffin Man. I don't really make a whole lot of muffins, for a lot of reasons, one of the main ones being that on the rankings of breakfast foods they definitely do not crack the top five, maybe not even the top ten. If I have an option for a bagel or a waffle, I'll pick one of them over a muffin every single time. I also prefer cereal, cinnamon rolls, or *cue eye roll* avocado toast. I've just never risen from my slumber and been like, "You know what would really hit the spot right now? A MUFFIN." But!!! In recent months, since my friend Logan came into my life, I've been making muffins a lot more frequently because he really loves them. So the last blueberry muffins I made were from a 99cent Betty Crocker mix packet which he brought into my house and asked me sweetly to make, because they're what he grew up with and along with many preservatives, they are full of nostalgia for him. Here is Logan and me, preparing to mix the muffin batter. Out of respect (and to make up for the disrespect of rolling up with muffin mix), he wore one of my aprons. I will treasure this picture forever.
You guys...Ina has "a thing" about commercial granola bars. Her beef with them, apparently, is that they say they contain real fruit and nuts but that all she sees when she looks at the labels are like, ten different kinds of corn syrup. I'm going to go ahead and guess, just based on this, that none of the lunches her mom packed for her growing up contained any Fruit By the Foot. And surely if we introduced her to Gushers, she would die. This is a real shame. I also feel like this disdain for corn syrup is maybe just a tad self-righteous, coming from the woman whose frosting recipe calls for literally six entire sticks of butter. At that point, what's a little corn syrup to you really? People's nutritional hills-to-die-on really fascinate me (and also kind of annoy me sometimes) and the ones about sugar might get me the most. I feel like, at some point, sugar is sugar and whether you're baking with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc you're still probably making something that's not amazing for you so, in terms of sugar, why not just be in for a penny in for a pound, amirite? So while I'm on this topic, before I even get to the actual point (please, I know you're here for the tangents), I would like to just let anyone and everyone know that I'm absolutely not interested in your "healthy substitutes" for things that taste good in their original form. I do not WANT a chocolate chip pancake made out of bananas and grains you harvested in your field this morning. If I want a banana I will eat one, and if I want a chocolate chip pancake I will eat one, and that's that. And DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT come @ me with "cashew cheese". Just don't. I don't even think I should honor that concept with an explanation of why it's so wrong. If that's not self-evident, I can't help you.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
So down to the granola bar ingredients. I rolled up to Kroger only to find that their already meager bulk bins had been EMPTIED because if you scoop dates into a bag and then someone else scoops dates into a bag, you might get the coronavirus. I'm glad they've taken the precaution of removing this shopping option, since I cannot resisting licking my hands after every grocery trip I make. Thankfully, they still had the lil tower of small containers of some of the weirder items right there in the organic section, which was where I was able to find dates. The rest of this stuff was on the baking aisle, with the exception of wheat germ which was, for some reason, with the cereal. I'm still kind of unclear on what wheat germ is actually used for by people, and the context of it being located on the cereal aisle makes me wonder even more. Do people eat it like grape nuts? Sprinkle it on stuff like how people like to do with nutritional yeast right now? ("It tastes just like cheese!" You know what else tastes like cheese? Actual cheese. You're welcome.) Anyway, I was very grateful that Kroger at least had everything I needed and I didn't have to go on a for real ItemQuest.
At first I saw the pictures of this and thought, "YAY!!! Cinnamon rolls!" And then a couple of weeks ago, I actually tried making cinnamon rolls for the first time and realized that my inability to roll/shape/slice yeast doughs is still a thing. AND THEN I read this entire recipe and realized these get filled with raisins. So here we go!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!
ItemQuest was only dramatic because the stores just DID NOT have puff pastry sheets; I was only finding it in "shells". I tried Bi-Lo and Dan tried Food Lion before he finally located sheets at Publix. The rest of the ingredients, I already had on hand!