Making Our Own Burgers

We've still got a few more great grilling experiences to share before summer comes to a close again.  Lately we've been a bit worried about what exactly goes on during the process of making ground beef and what they may be putting in there to extend the product, so we decided to try making our own ground beef. 

What was amazing is how incredibly easy this process really is. I had an image in my head of needing some industrial machine that glops the beef out in those noodle like strings, but honestly all you need is a food processor and a big chuck steak.  If you normally use a pound of ground beef for a meal, get a steak that's slightly bigger or up to a pound and a half.

To get things started Megan trimmed off the largest pieces of fat and then cut the steak into large chunks.

The meat goes into the food processor and is pulsed until it reaches the right consistency, and we discovered we didn't even need to add in egg or oil or anything to get it to stick together.  It's literally as simple as meat + mixing = ground beef.

The end result was pretty similar in consistency and color to ground beef you'd buy in a package, although the texture is noticeably different (read: better).  Our own home made ground beef formed into patties just as well as anything we've ever bought at the store.

We wanted to make our burger patties unique and have more flavor than just what comes from the beef, so we also ground up two kinds of mushrooms and white onion.

The two ground mixtures were mixed together, and then we added in a host of seasonings like garlic powder, spicy pepper seasoning, and of course salt and pepper. We were out of Worcestershire sauce, so a few dabs of A1 steak sauce went in its place.

Here are the finished patties, which stuck together easily and didn't require any extra work to put together.  The extra vegetables and seasonings make these smell great!

That same day we found a new grill on clearance, as the grilling season is ending and all the grocery stores are trying to get rid of them. We actually paid less for this nice one than we did for the our other rickety, tiny grill.

The end result was amazingly juicy burgers as good or better than what we would have made with store bought ground beef, and we'll definitely be going this route again in the future. We may try different types of steak in the future, as well as possibly other methods of seasoning, such as marinating the steaks ahead of time.

Here's our finished meal, complete with side salad. It's not really clear from the picture, but we like a lot of fruits and veggies on our salads.  This one has peach, nectarine, tomatoes, onions, carrots, and more.  For my burger I threw on avocado, tomato, cheddar, onion, ketchup, and steak sauce.

That's it for now, and we'll be back soon with the end of our grilling adventures and the start of the fall season. Coming up this fall will be whole chicken with lemon baked in dough, chili made in a pumpkin, and more!

Murder Mystery Dinner, Pretzels, And More!

We've been a little behind in keeping up with our food blogs lately, so this one is going to cover several different topics.  After recently posting a look back at grilling season, now we'll dive into a murder mystery dinner we did a few weeks back, adventures in making some amazingly fantastic pretzels, and even a little more grilled kebab action.

We have a weekly gaming group that plays various role-playing games on the weekend, from D&D to Call of Cthulhu to Toon and just about everything in-between. One week we decided to mix our love of cooking with our weekly gaming and do a murder mystery dinner. The game was Italian themed, so of course we had a delicious pasta dinner.

The first course was an appetizer commonly found in Italian restaurants that's both easy and fantastically tasty.  Take a garlic bulb or two and cut off the top section so the cloves are just sticking out of the top. Pull off the excess layers of skin off the sides of the bulb.  Either put the bulbs in tin-foil, or in a terracotta garlic baker (you can see the bottom half of ours near the top of the photo below), and then top the bulbs with a drizzle of olive oil and a handful of salt and pepper or any other spices that strike your fancy.

Bake the bulbs for around 40 minutes until the cloves get soft. You'll know when they're ready because the cloves easily slide out when you press a fork against the bottom of the bulb. Mash up the cloves a bit with a fork inside a shallow bowl or pasta plate and then pour in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and fresh ground pepper.  Tear up pieces of French bread and dip it into the garlic mixture for an amazing appetizer.

The cast for the murder mystery required an extra female character we couldn't leave out in case she ended up being the murderer, so we had Jacob play a male version of the character.  Things got, um, weird as the story progressed and it was revealed he was in love with Matt's character, who also had a monkey named Coco.

For the main course we put together a spinach and ricotta cannelloni, taken from the cookbook "Relaxed Cooking with Curtis Stone." Unfortunately we couldn't find fresh pasta sheets and didn't have time to make our own, so instead the dish ended up being manicotti instead of cannelloni.

Fresh herbs do actually make a difference here, so if at all possible get fresh basil and thyme to take this dish from good to extraordinary.

The finished product is made up of three layers: a tomato sauce on the bottom, the middle ricotta filling in the manicotti, and the bechamel sauce on top. Each layer can be made separately and put together at the end, so for instance you can make the tomato sauce well ahead of time and keep it refrigerated.

For our desert Cristal put together a spectacular tiramasu complete with lady fingers, which was a sweet ending to our bloody murder mystery.

After a less than satisfactory experience at a local pretzel shop we decided to try putting together our own pretzels. Megan found a fantastic recipe online that results in soft and delicious pretzels far better than what you'll pay for in mall food courts.  The pictures below are of pepperoni pretzels, which we dipped in marinara sauce.  These are easy to modify in any given direction, and you could even make them more of a desert by using cinnamon instead of salt.

After making these pretzels a few time it dawned on us that the soft texture and intense flavor would be great for a sandwich roll.

We turned them into pretzel themed Philly cheese steak sandwiches with roast beef, caramelized onions, and the same cheese sauce we'd normally use for dipping.

In the last blog I mentioned making kebabs with sausage instead of chicken, and here's the fruit of our labors. We really enjoyed going this route as the sausage didn't need to cook nearly as long as raw chicken, so all the veggies and meat were perfectly done at the same time.  For the veggies we used mushrooms, green and red bell pepper, red and white onion, and potatoes and carrots (be sure to microwave or bake the potatoes and carrots briefly before hand, or they wont get soft on the grill).  A white wine marinade was brushed over the vegetables repeatedly during the grilling process.

That's it for now, check back soon for more of our adventures in cooking!

Grilling Season

Unfortunately we're nearing the end of the grilling season in Montana, but we've grilled up a storm of tasty in the short time we've had warm enough weather to hang around outside while cooking.  We started the season off with a couple of variations on a real classic - the grilled burger.  We like to do lots of different things with burgers besides just changing the seasonings. For the burgers below we stuffed the center of the patties with various kinds of cheeses and peppers to essentially make them into "popper" burgers.

This one also has a full Anaheim pepper stuffed with cream cheese.  You can see the toothpicks we use to keep them together on the grill (remember to take them out before digging in!)  You could use this same basic idea with pretty much any type of pepper from jalapenos to green bell peppers.  Personally I like the Anaheim best as it's not too spicy and gets a slightly sweet flavor when the skin is blackened on the grill.

No grilling season can pass by without kebabs, and these are tons of fun just because of the sheer variety that is at your fingertips.  Below you can see the vegetable variety we went with, which includes mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, squash, broccoli, small potatoes, red onions, and a variety of bell peppers.

We also marinated chicken in a white wine and herb marinade for several hours, and then cut it up into square chunks to fit on the skewers.

Here you can see some of the finished products from the various times we've done kebabs this summer. Tomorrow night we're making another variety using sausages with fire roasted peppers and asiago cheese inside.

Corn on the cob done on the grill is a totally different experience from corn on the cob cooked in a pot of water, so we've taken advantage of the opportunity and had lots of corn over the last month.  For a little variety, we also cooked corn and then sliced it off the cob to throw on salads.

Hot dogs are an obvious grill food, but why do something so plain and simple?  For one grilling excursion a few weeks back we stuffed hot dogs with cheddar and then wrapped them in bacon.

Mixing up different styles, we made steak and vegetable fajitas cooked on the grill.  The strips of peppers and onions get a vastly different flavor blackening on the grill than they do being cooked on the stovetop.

One of our most recent grilled meals was a spur of the moment thing, as we found pork shoulder steaks on clearance while shopping the other day. The price couldn't be beat and we planned on making them that night so we wouldn't have to worry about the rapidly approaching expiration date.  The pork steaks were also marinated throughout the day so they were packed with flavor and didn't get dry.

To round out the meal we had Au Gratin potatoes and a nice big salad with nectarine, peach, apple, and an assortment of veggies.

Here's the aforementioned sausages, which we decided to try out before making them into kabobs by having them like hot dogs.  Rather than using the standards of onions, relish, or ketchup, we threw on chunky salsa and hot sauce.

These were incredibly fantastic sliders we had, but unfortunately we can't claim credit for their creation.  The butcher at the grocery store where we shop had these made for us, throwing in pieces of bacon and cheese. We topped them off with carmelized onions and mushrooms and put them on potato bread.  On the side are sweet potato fries.

We've still got a few more awesome grilling adventures to look forward to over the next week or two before it starts getting cold again, and then its on to fall cooking as we gear up for the fantastic Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas meals ahead!