Mushroom Burgers: Impromptu

To the chagrin of my mother and sister, I rarely use a recipe. I'll read a recipe easily enough, see how it all sort of comes together and the base ingredients, but the simple fact is that I rarely follow it to the exact measurements. It's partially a product of 22 years ignoring walnuts or almonds, of ignoring sesame oil and saying olive oil or vegetable oil is 'good enough'.

But really? It's because I do what tastes best for the dish.

Really. Try it. All you do is continually taste and smell while you cook. You'll find you can refine your palate very quickly by being able to smell when something is getting too salty, too much meat or the touch of your food isn't the consistency you want.

So that said, this weekend I made Impromptu burgers.

What are impromptu burgers? I had ground chuck, portabello mushrooms, tzatziki, hamburger bun and fixins.

No pictures because I couldn't find my damn camera.

So no recipe, but here we go.

Start with the portabello. I had one and a half (don't ask why I have a half), clean them really well and dice them up. Do not, under any circumstances, ever, wash your mushrooms. Especially when they are one of the binding ingredients. The truth is that a mushroom is basically a sponge, wash it in water and it'll soak everything up...except what it's soaking up is water. Use a 2 dollar mushroom brush, keep em moist but not wet, and they will instead soak up the juices from the meat. That's a much better prospect.

So dice up your mushroom, I went for a particularly fine chop because my roommate hates mushroom, but I smuggled it in there all the same and was reasonably sure he didn't know the difference.

Add one finely chopped sprig of dill to the chuck, salt and pepper, and the chopped mushroom. Shape em into patties, I went with about 5 inches diameter (remember that ground meat shrinks like mad), and about half an inch width. All in all about a third to a half pound each. Lay em on some plastic wrap and toss them in the fridge to stiffen up a little. The constant problem with shaping with your hands is the heat from your hands melts the fat of the meat, makes it sticky and more likely to fall apart, so you need to firm em up.

It's alright, while those are in the fridge, grab an old yellow onion you forgot about at the bottom of a brown paper bag, slice into large rings. Prep a shallow pan with two tablespoons (Give or take, I never measure) olive oil and begin carmelizing.

Carmelized onion rings are godly. And should be added to more or less every burger in existence. If McDonalds ever comes out with a McCarmelized onion burger...well that'll simply be the end of the world.

That'll take about half an hour on medium heat, if they start crisping add a tablespoon of water to soften them up again, you want them to carmelize, crisp up. Toss on a bit of salt too for good measure.

At this point, your aforementioned roommate, who has no love for onions may complain. I sometimes turn on the fan to humor him. Sometimes.

After that half hour, push the onions to the side and grab the burgers, start frying them up in all that onion-juicy goodness. Don't overcrowd the pan and make sure the burgers don't touch each other. Next tip: DON'T TOUCH THEM.

Just leave em be. For my burgers, they took about 8 minutes per side, two flips, the last flip was just to brown evenly. You, and me, like everyone else gets anxious about things sticking to the pan. They won't, it's ground chuck, it has a fat content, the grease will pull them back up. No stress. The more you touch, the more likely they fall apart.

Toast your hamburger buns, if you're stupid like me you forgot to check your arugula and it's gone moldy, so these burgers are going without greens today. Spread one spoonful of tzatziki on the top, garnish with a spoonful of onion, add burger and voila.

I give you Mushroom Burger: Impromptu.

All in all, they took me not quite 60 minutes to make, half of which I spent idling in world of warcraft.

Go figure.

Tasty though.