The Ultimate Burger

I love burgers! I love the simple burger with good cheese; ketchup and mustard but mostly, I prefer burgers with a twist. When devising the ultimate burger, I often think back on steak entrées that I’ve executed in the past. I think of the components of the dish and how each added to the overall flavor performance. My ultimate burger is a variation of a beef tenderloin dish that I used to do over and over in a café back in Iowa. The entrée was beef tenderloin stuffed with goat cheese and chipotles on a pillow of garlic mashed potatoes, with wilted spinach and finished with roasted tomatoes. So so good!

This week, . With that in mind, I couldn’t help but think of what my ultimate burger might be.  

Chipotle and Goat Cheese stuffed burger with Garlic Aioli, Spinach and roasted Tomatoes

What you’ll need:

• 2 pounds of ground beef, combination ground chuck and sirloin if you want to get specific and 80-20 please! What’s 80-20, you ask? 80% ground beef, 20% fat. We’re making the ultimate burger here and it’s all about flavor so you need the fat! If health is what we’re after then eat this only three times a year. Eat this once a week and maybe we should have a little chat. Let’s continue.

Goat cheese and chipotle filling:

• 6 oz. goat cheese room temperature.
• ½ can chipotle in adobo, finely chopped. If you have a mini food processor this should do the trick as well.
• 4 garlic cloves, minced. If you have a mini food processor, you can add the garlic to the chipotles and puree your little heart out.

In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the chipotles, garlic and goat cheese and mix until fully incorporated and season with salt and pepper. You can do this ahead of time, as the mixture should hold well for a few days.

Prep the burgers. Portion your two pounds of ground beef into 4 oz. patties. (This will yield 8 4oz. patties) In the center of the patty, spoon the goat cheese filling and place another 4 oz. patty on top. Seal the edges of the ground beef by pressing the top patty down onto the bottom patty. Encase the filling by rounding out the edges to secure a seamless stuffed burger. Once again, it is totally fine to do this ahead of time. Just make sure to thoroughly wrap in plastic and store on the bottom shelf of the fridge. (It is essential to avoid improperly wrapped burgers bleeding on the lower shelves of produce. Store your proteins on the bottom shelves of your refrigerator!)

Garlic Aioli

• 2 cups of Mayo
• ¼ cup Dijon mustard
• 1 bunch of parsley, finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 lemons, juice of
• 1 tsp of cayenne pepper
• Salt and pepper to taste

To make the aioli. Emulsifications are fun if you’ve done them a thousand times in your illustrious culinary career but I’m thinking simplicity so just use mayonnaise. Save yourself the headache! Combine the above components in a mixing bowl and fully incorporate. Yes, you can make this ahead of time.

Roasted Tomatoes

• 4 Roma tomatoes
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 sprig of Rosemary
• 1 sprig of thyme,
• Olive Oil

If you’ve forgotten how to effectively roast tomatoes, .

To cook the burger.

First, it’s extremely important to understand the cooking process. As my chefs in culinary school used to always say, “There’s a million ways to Mecca, I don’t care how you get there, just get there.” I’ll tell you my way and then you can decide for yourself.

I prefer grilling burgers. I like the flavor that the grill provides and the searing effect of a good salt and pepper crust that you get from the high heat of the grill. Some prefer the cooking method of a flat top where the burger cooks in its own fat. Not a bad way to go either, but I think it gets a little sloppy. This conversation could last for hours so let’s just agree to move on.

Remove your burgers from the fridge and allow them to come to room temperature. I cannot emphasize this enough. If you start grilling with cold burgers it becomes really difficult to control the internal temperature of the burger. You usually end up over cooking the outside of the burger just to get the inside nice and warm. Here’s a hint, when you light your grill, remove the burgers from the fridge. This should give you ample time to allow your burgers to saunter to a nice comfortable temperature and then season generously with good kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. Might be a good time to refresh the peppercorns in your peppermill!

Now, with your grill at a pretty high heat, lay your room temperature burgers on the hottest spot on the grill. After about five minutes, give them a flip and let them cook for another five minutes. Turn your grill knobs down to medium heat, slide your burgers to a not so hot portion of the grill, close the top of the grill and cook for another ten minutes. The idea here is to get off to a fast start on high heat, then back the heat down and allow the burgers to slowly roast to a nice internal temperature of 140-degrees. I know, I know, the health department will frown at cooking burgers below the desired temperature of 165-degrees but you bought your burgers from a good source didn’t you? You bought your ground beef knowing what part of the cow your meat came from right? You saw the butcher grind your meat too, right? You also stored them in the fridge the minute you got home right? If so, then you can enjoy them at a nice medium rare, medium internal temperature.

[Side note. The only reason most chain restaurants won’t allow you to request your burger to be cooked at a medium rare temperature is because they have no idea what part of the cow their burgers are derived from. If they don’t know, they demand it cooked all the way through to ensure there’s no risk of a foodborne illness. Most high volume ground beef producers fill their ground beef with all sorts of undesirables to lower the cost of the individual unit thus stretching output and increasing profits. Don’t believe me? Check out the movie Food Inc.]

When your burgers have reached a nice medium rare to medium internal temperature, remove them from the heat to a clean side plate. While the burgers are resting, toast the burger bun of your choice on your relatively hot grill. I use brioche buns because of the sweetness of the dough but I’m giving you the freedom of choice here. This should take just a few seconds so don’t turn your head to check the score of the football game. Nice, the buns are toasted and now it’s time to assemble the burger.

On the bottom bun, spread your garlic aioli. Lay a few leaves of spinach down and next goes your burger. Top your burger with a few roasted tomatoes and then finish it with the top of the bun. I’m also a huge fan of adding fried onion strings to the burger as well. This is your choice. Either way, this is the ultimate burger. You can’t go wrong!

I know it may seem a little odd to have wine with a burger but trust me, the flavors of this burger need the complexity that most beers cannot achieve. I’ve found that most deep red Malbecs or wines from Chile are a perfect choice to handle such flavor. Let me know what you think!

Buen Provecho!