The food shows often feature meals that are based on a classic dish that is presented in an atypical form. Consider a sandwich served as its components rather than as the whole that we know as a Reuben or Hotdog. Today, I set out to make burgers – not deconstructed burgers or elevated burgers or anything fancy – just plain ole American hamburgers. I didn’t know that they would turn into deconstructed burgers before they were done.
I typically use ground chuck 80/20 for my burgers. The unctuous fattiness of ground chuck is much tastier than lean sirloin or pink slime. I buy it in 1-lb packages, and we usually get two meals out of the packet. One meal is a picadillo type dish that we often use as a topping for chalupas. The remainder is frozen and used later to make burgers. Today was that day.
Susan thawed out the remainder of a couple of packets of frozen ground chuck, added a couple of tablespoons of bleu cheese crumbles and made a patty for each of us. I prepared the vegetables – romaine, tomato, onion and pickles. Susan sprayed some olive oil on the buns, and I was off to grill patties and buns for hamburgers. The patties seemed a bit fragile as I put them on the grill. No matter, I thought.
By the time that the patties were cooked, they had fallen apart several times. A good third of the meat fell down into the grill pan by the time I got the meat properly cooked. Merde! I picked up my broken patties and put them on the buns. I told Susan what had happened, and we resolved to never again make burger patties from frozen ground meat.
When it was all said and done, we had a passable meal that Susan described as a deconstructed burger not because of the culinary technique but because the patties had fallen apart. Our burgers looked like this.
All I can say about this culinary misadventure is that at least it didn’t turn out as hamberders!