Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Burger Night!

Last night I had a lazy night in the kitchen and wanted to make something quick and yummy!  So, I decided on BURGERS!
I made the bread earlier in the day so it worked out perfectly that I had a few buns just the right size for the burgers.

Burgers are super easy to make and they are the perfect culinary medium for experiments.  New ingredients into the meat, exotic toppings, etc.  Just use what you have or try new ingredients!

For this burger here's what I did:

-In a large bowl I put about 1 1/2 lbs of ground beef.  You can use 80/20 for a fattier juicier burger.  But I used 90/10 beef.
-Grate in 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic and 1 jalapeƱo pepper.
-Add 1 teaspoon of salt
-Add 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper
-Combine with hands until all ingredients are evenly distributed. 
- Make your burger patties and put on a hot grill (or frying) pan and do not move or touch for about 3 minutes. 
-Flip burger over and cook another 3-4 minutes depending on how you like your burgers cooked. 
-Never press on your burgers because that will cause all the juices to run out- resulting in a dry and hard burger.
-When the juices that are running out of the burger are clear (and no longer red) then it has been cooked to a medium-well or beyond.  So, if you want it more on the medium side cook about 3 minutes on each side.
-Remove burgers from pan and let them rest while you prep the buns.
-I like to toast my buns- you can do this in a toaster, toaster oven or on the grill pan.

Topping:
- 2 Tablespoons of cream cheese
- hot sauce of your choice
-2 Tablespoons of chopped cilantro

-Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and spoon on top of burger.  Then top with a few tomato slices and baby spinach. 

Enjoy!

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Handmade bread the easy way!

Many of you have asked for a generic bread making recipe and tutorial and here it is! You don't need any fancy breadmaking machine or equipment!  It's so easy anyone can do it.  I'd love to hear from you after you try it out... and let me know what fun ingredients you decided to put in your bread.

p.s.- I'm a semifinalist in YouTube's NextUp Contest! I would really appreciate your votes. It's really simple... Just click this link: http://www.youtube.com/creators?x=nextup_nsFqzT7Iwpc
and give my video a "thumbs up."  You can vote every day until Friday, April 8, 2011. Thank you!



Now... enjoy your breadmaking video!