So tonight I decided to make dinner since tomorrow we're going out for Indian food and Thursday I'm going golfing which means dinner on the golf course. Plus I really just had a hankering for burgers! Fortunately so did LL. While buying the hamburger though, I decided to take a shot and buy......smelt! Yep, smelt. So I'm not sure if it counts as surf and turf since it's a fresh water fish, but I think it does. I only bought a half pound of smelt because I wanted it to be an appetizer, but even that amount was more than we really needed. It's a good amount for 3-4 people for an appetizer though.
Cooking the smelt was pretty easy as I just followed this recipe. They were really just delicious with a little ketchup. In the future maybe I'll have some cocktail sauce that isn't from 1999 on hand. Yeah, it was another one of THOSE finds that irritates LL and with good reason. Sigh. Speaking of LL, she really liked the smelt and was complimentary of me and my ability to experiment, but really it's only because she's willing to try things like this that allow me to cook them. It's all good.
I also tried a new technique when cooking the hamburgers. As a veteran Wendy's grill man of two years+, I know how to cook burgers, but the grills they use are flat and not like your grill at home. Some of my skills and ideas about cooking them have been influenced by flat grilling, despite owning a normal grill for 15 years. So today I decided to research what the experts say and just do it that way. You know what? The burgers turned out pretty damn good. The two changes were: after forming the patty, make an indentation in the top of the patties. This indentation will keep the burger from bloating up and becoming a "meat ball" of sorts. The second thing was to only flip the burgers once and no pressing. Because of the indentation, the temptation to press was greatly reduced. I only flipped them once, after about 5 minutes, and then actually checked the internal temperature to make sure they were done. Good stuff. You're never too old to learn!
Just a laid back communication with friends and family who might care about what's going on in Joe's life.
3 comments:
that is handy advice! I don't even like burgers but I'm desperate to try these tricks now...
And well done on the smelt!
Your evolution into foodie is truly impressive...smelt? Who would have thought? Actually I think they are salt water btw.
That's good to know about the indentation. I'm going to try that next time. I hate when the burgers get all bloated in the center.
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