Brioche Blue Cheese and Bacon Burgers

It’s not that football is something I don’t like, I just never really got into it. Maybe it’s because I feel guilty and unproductive when I sit on the couch all day. Perhaps I was just resisting being like everyone else as I sometimes stubbornly tend to do. Who knows why I never really got into it, but NOW I’m into it.

Wes has two new AWESOME high definition televisions at his new place and sitting on the new couch watching big dudes crash into each other all day has suddenly become awesome. And for some reason, I always get a strong desire to grill burgers when the games are on.

So Wes and I have been making and experimenting with several different stuffed blue cheese burgers and I think we found the winner.

Grill these for your next big football day. Or right now if you just can’t wait.

You will need…

1 ½ lb ground beef (preferably 80/20)

1 small yellow onion, grated

1 tablespoon salt

½ tablespoon pepper

8 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese

1 large tomato, sliced ¼ inch thick

2 cups arugula

4 slices your favorite thick cut bacon

8 slices brioche bread

4 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

Start by heating your grill to a high heat.

In a large heavy pan over medium low heat. Add in the bacon and cook until crispy, flipping once. About 20 minutes. When the bacon is crispy, remove it from the pan onto a paper towel and set aside.

While the bacon is cooking, combine the beef, salt, pepper and onion in a medium bowl. Using your hand, gently combine the ingredients. Don’t over handle the meat.

When everything is combined, divide the meat into 8 balls about 3 ounces each.

Form 4 of the balls into patties and use the bottom of a glass to make a depression in the center of each patty. 

Fill the patties with 2 tablespoons of blue cheese.

Form the top patties and lay them on top of the cheese filled patties. Gently form them into one patty.

Lightly oil the patties and grill them until cooked to your liking. About 5 minutes a side for medium. Flipping them once.

While the burgers are grilling, lightly butter both sides of the brioche and grill it on each side until lightly grilled. About 2 minutes a side.

When your burgers are cooked to your liking, remove from the heat, cover and let rest for 2 to 3 minutes.

Lay a burger on each brioche bun, top with arugula and tomato. 

Slice each piece of back in half, place it on top of the burger and serve hot.

 

Love and Beer Floats

Angela 

Brioche Blue Cheese and Bacon Burgers

1 ½ lb ground beef (preferably 80/20)

1 small yellow onion, grated

1 tablespoon salt

½ tablespoon pepper

8 tablespoons crumbled blue cheese

1 large tomato, sliced ¼ inch thick

2 cups arugula

4 slices your favorite thick cut bacon

8 slices brioche bread

4 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

Start by heating your grill to a high heat.

In a large heavy pan over medium low heat. Add in the bacon and cook until crispy, flipping once. About 20 minutes. When the bacon is crispy, remove it from the pan onto a paper towel and set aside.

While the bacon is cooking, combine the beef, salt, pepper and onion in a medium bowl. Using your hand, gently combine the ingredients. Don’t over handle the meat.

When everything is combined, divide the meat into 8 balls about 3 ounces each.

Form 4 of the balls into patties and use the bottom of a glass to make a depression in the center of each patty. 

Fill the patties with 2 tablespoons of blue cheese.

Form the top patties and lay them on top of the cheese filled patties. Gently form them into one patty.

Lightly oil the patties and grill them until cooked to your liking. About 5 minutes a side for medium. Flipping them once.

While the burgers are grilling, lightly butter both sides of the brioche and grill it on each side until lightly grilled. About 2 minutes a side.

When your burgers are cooked to your liking, remove from the heat, cover and let rest for 2 to 3 minutes.

Lay a burger on each brioche bun, top with arugula and tomato. Slice each piece of back in half, place it on top of the burger and serve hot. 

Alberto's Burger

When my parents told me six month ago that my middle brother Albert would be joining our little roommate situation for some undetermined amount of time, I was a little nervous.

Except, subtract the little nervous and add in freaking terrified.

I love my brother very much, but we are the perfect storm of really similar and really different in all the wrong ways.

But I’m happy to report that most of my concerns were silly and we have gotten along swimmingly. For the most part.

It is actually really enjoyable having him around and we’ve been able to spend more time together in the last six months than we have in the last six years.

And the best part is that he shares my extreme love of food.

He is never afraid of trying new things and mixing things in odd combinations.

So it’s no surprise that he inspired what is now my all time favorite burger. A burger so delicious that I had to give it a name.

Who better to name it after than the man who inspired it?

You will need…

For the Burger Patty:

1 ½ pound ground chuck (80 percent lean)

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ onion, grated

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

For the Avocado Spread

2 ripe avocados

1 large jalapeno, seeds removed and diced

1 tablespoon garlic powder

½ onion, diced

Juice of 1 lime

For the Alberto Burger

4 onion buns

3 shallots, sliced into thin rings

4 slices Swiss cheese

6 slices maple bacon

1 ripe tomato, sliced

1 head butter lettuce, separated into individual leaves

Start by cooking your maple bacon in a large, heavy sauté pan over low heat. The lower you cook your bacon, the better of a crisp you will get it.

Cook your bacon for 20 to 30 minutes, until brown and crisped.

While the bacon is cooking, combine the ground beef, salt, pepper and grated onion in a bowl and use your hands to combine completely.

Divide the beef into 4 equal parts and roll them into patties about 4 inches in diameter. Brush them lightly with the oil and set them aside.

Heat your grill to a medium high heat.

When the bacon is done cooking, add in your sliced shallots to the bacon fat and cook them down for about 15 minutes, until they are very brown and soft.

While the shallots are cooking down, combine the avocado, jalapeno, diced onion, garlic powder and lime juice in a medium sized bowl and combine until the avocados are mashed and everything is well combined.

By now, the shallots should be cooked down. Remove them from the heat and add them to a serving plate with the tomatoes, lettuce, and the bacon (chop each piece into 2 pieces).

Take your cheese and your burger patties out to the grill. Place your patties down on a hot part of a grill and sear the patties on one side for 2 minutes. Flip the patties and sear them over a hot part of the grill for another 2 minutes and then move it to a slightly cooler part of the grill.

Add a slice of cheese to each patty and continue to cook the patties until the cheese has completely melted.

As soon as the cheese has melted, add the buns to the grill and heat them for 10 to 20 seconds to give them a good toast.

Spread the bottom of each bun with 2 tablespoons of the avocado spread and top the spread with a burger.

Top the burger, 3 half bacon pieces, the browned shallots, lettuce and tomato.

Serve hot to those with a hearty appetite.

Love and Beer Floats

Angela

The BEST Meatballs

I never order meatballs in a restaurant.

And I’ll tell you why.

Nine times out of ten they are dense. Dense and relatively flavorless. They just float around in whatever sauce they are served with being all meaty and ball like.

So when my mom suggested a Sunday night of spaghetti and meatballs, I set out on a quest.

A quest to discover the most moist and delicious of all the meatballs.

I scoured high and low.

And by that I mean I did a Google search.

But none of the recipes I found looked that different from one another.

And then I got a sign.

Actually, an email.

I get email blasts from a kitchen website every so often, and it just so happened to be a recipe for meatballs.

A recipe with something special. Ricotta.

If you have been paying any attention to me lately, or even trying to ignore me, I’ve made it really clear that I am currently obsessed with ricotta.

I don’t care for it much on its own, but it makes dishes you mix it with so light and fluffy and AWESOME.

As soon as I saw there was ricotta in this recipe, I knew it was the one.

It was freaking awesome. The meatballs were so juicy and flavorful on their own that they didn’t really need a sauce. But they would be a great addition to any dish.

You will need…

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

1 medium white onion, diced

3 clove garlic, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh thyme leaves

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh oregano leaves

2 tablespoons finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

2 eggs

1½ cups fresh whole milk ricotta

2½ pounds of ground beef, preferably grass-fed

1 cup finely ground fresh breadcrumbs

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Kosher salt

Start by preheating the oven to 400°.

Then, in a medium skillet set over medium heat, heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and add the onion and garlic.

Cook until tender, about 8 minutes.

Add the thyme, oregano and parsley and cook for 1 minute.

Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the eggs together.

Then fold the ricotta cheese into them.

Using your hands, mix the cheese-egg mixture with the beef, the reserved onion mixture, breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese until just combined. 

Season with salt.

Using your hands, scoop the meatballs into rounds; roll each scoop into a 1½-inch ball in between the palms of your hands.

In a medium skillet set over medium heat, add the remaining tablespoon of the olive oil. Add in the meatballs.

Cook, turning, until browned on all sides, about 5 minutes.

Place the meatballs on a sheet pan lined with aluminum foil and bake for 15 minutes or until the internal temperature of each meatball is 140°.

Serve warm or in your favorite sauce.

Heaven.

Love and Beer Floats

Angela

Cupcakes. Meatloaf Cupackes

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Morgan requested (and I use this term loosely because it was more like demanded) that she make an appearance on the blog. Of course, she realized that this meant she had to actually come over for a NFT dinner. How rough... right? I asked her and her boyfriend Blake (also a long time friend) to come up with what they would really really want to eat. Big mistake. We were all chatting online and I was feeling pretty good when they came up with mashed potatoes, asparagus and here is where my heart sank... meatloaf. What? Who when they can have anything requests meatloaf??? Blake and Morgan do.

Well, I accepted their challenge but decided to do it my way. On the menu...

cream of asparagus soup with garlic Parmesan crustinis

arugula and beet salad with pecans

and...

meatloaf cupcakes with honey chipotle barbecue sauce and horseradish mashed potato frosting.

Um.... in over my head much?

While researching meatloaf, I learned one thing. You can put anything, and I mean ANYTHING in meatloaf and it will be good. I had no idea what to go with. So, my plan was to go with what I know and what I know is to do as Ina tells me. For those of you who don't know who Ina is, she is a popular food network star known as the Barefoot Contessa. You can make any of her recipes and it's pretty much a guarantee. The only other trick I had up my sleeve was bacon. Everything is better with bacon. Lots of bacon. Not to mention the best barbecue sauce I've ever had. I highly recommend Sweet Baby Ray's honey chipotle barbecue sauce. You will not be sorry.

So folks, the lesson of the day is that meatloaf is not so scary. And even though it did not end up like this...

but I bet you anything they tasted better.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon good olive oil

3 cups chopped yellow onions (3 onions)

1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1/3 cup canned chicken stock or broth

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 1/2 pounds ground chuck (81 percent lean)

1/2 cup plain dry bread crumbs (recommended: Progresso)

2 extra-large eggs, beaten

8 pieces crisp bacon finely chopped

1 cup favorite barbecue sauce

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Heat the olive oil in a medium saute pan. Add the onions, thyme, salt, and pepper and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, for 8 to 10 minutes, until the onions are translucent but not brown. Off the heat, add the Worcestershire sauce, chicken stock, and tomato paste. Allow to cool slightly. In a large bowl, combine the ground chuck, onion mixture, bread crumbs, bacon and eggs, and mix lightly with a fork. Don't mash or the meatloaf will be dense. Divide the mixture into 6 (10 to 11-ounce) portions and shape each portion into a small loaf on a sheet pan. Spread about a tablespoon of sauce on the top of each portion. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the internal temperature is 155 to 160 degrees F and the meat loaves are cooked through. Serve hot.

Peace and Beer Floats

Angela

P.S. After a few drinks Morgan asked if I was going to add some old pictures of us in the blog. As I was searching through old photos, I realized there were too many good ones to pick just one. So here you go... a Morgan montage.