If you've been keeping up with my most recent posts, you know that I have been on a journey to learn how to grill well. So far, I have made a 16-hour, apple wood, smoked brisket and ribs, a whole Branzino, and most recently, I joined with friends to learn how to make pizza.
In this post, I'll be making burgers. As you know, in every journey, there are ups and downs, and part of this meal was a bit of a downer. That said, I am grateful, because as wonderful as successes are, the only way I learn and grow, is from my mistakes and failures. Here we go...
Burger Night
Summer Fruit Salad
On this particular night, I decided to make what I thought was an "easy" meal. On the menu were burgers (with and without cheese), grilled corn, and salad. I will share the dishes in reverse order.
To start, I made a salad inspired by some pink pineapple I found at my local, grocery store. I don't know about you, but I had never seen, nor heard of, pink pineapple before. In addition, I found some ripened jackfruit. While I am familiar with raw and savory jackfruit preparations, I had only tasted sweet, ripened jackfruit once, while in Bangkok, Thailand.
So excited to find these fruits locally, I built my salad around them. To the pink pineapple and ripened jackfruit, I added blueberries, strawberries, mint, a pinch of dill and mixed greens. I also sprinkled in some salt and black pepper and then tossed all of it in a little bit of Meyer lemon, olive oil.
Every bite tasted like summer! This was one of the successful elements of our dinner.
Grilled Corn
Next, I grilled some corn. If you have never grilled corn, give it a try. It is, hands down, my favorite way to enjoy this vegetable. The smell of the kernels roasting, transports me to the stalls of beachside vendors in India, roadside vendors in Ghana and street markets in Mexico.
Each of these countries tops their corn differently, and it is all equally delicious. For this dinner, I went with a slather of butter and a sprinkle of salt.
Truthfully, the butter wasn't even necessary. The corn was so fresh, sweet and crunchy, that we could have just eaten it right off the grill with a dash of salt. That said, I think almost everything is better with butter.
Grilled Burgers
The main event was the burgers. When grilling, I like to go with ground beef that has some fat content, to keep the burgers moist. Here, I chose an 80/20 ground chuck and seasoned it liberally with salt, pepper and some garlic powder.
Chuck meat has a good lean-to-fat ratio and is balanced in flavor, but otherwise a little hum drum. For the best burgers, I like to blend different cuts of beef to build flavor, but that is a subject for another post, since I didn't have time to do that here.
Cheeseburger
The end result was a burger topped with cheese, avocado, home-grown tomatoes, red onion and a little bit of mayonnaise and ketchup. Sadly, (in case you can't tell from the picture) the burgers are where things went wrong. I overcooked them. I took my eyes off the grill for a few minutes to get some wine (priorities, right?) and it happened that quickly.
On a positive note, we agreed that the flavor of the burgers was great, but would have been richer and deeper, and the burgers more moist, had I taken them off the grill several minutes sooner.
I'm looking forward to a better result next time, as I continue to grow my grilling skills. I look forward to sharing more meals, hot off the grill, with you soon.
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