Meal No. 180: Peanut Butter Bacon Burgers

After all that cooking for Thanksgiving, and the accompanying clean-up, you'd think I would have had enough of involved and intensive meal preparation for a day or so. In fact, when I got started on the meal earlier this evening (well, last night), I wasn't even really finished cleaning up from Thursday's feasting and company.

But a recent trip to New Orleans cemented my resolve to attempt a re-creation of one of the Quarter's new iconic menu items: the peanut butter bacon burger from Yo Mama's Bar and Grill on St. Peter [Update: Yo Mama's closed in early 2016].

It started with making my own peanut butter:





Then, another new thing for me: grinding my own hamburger, using a mix of boneless beef short ribs and sirloin tip:



Then, you divide the ground meat into four rough piles and nudge it all together gently (rather than pat and mash and roll and squeeze):



Then I cooked 'em up along with some bacon, toasted the buns in butter in the skillet, and smeared on the special sauce I'd made earlier...




The final result: delicious.



That was Meal No. 180 in the new kitchen. [Recipe and Instructions from Cook's Illustrated, No. 93 (July/August 2008), p. 10.]