Meal No. 642: Patty Melts

It's been a mighty long stretch of being on the road, and I was very very glad to get home tonight. I was greeted by a cautiously happy Cyprus and a cadre of Roediger House regulars who were already inside and upstairs watching some television series they had wanted to catch up on.

That meant I got busy in the kitchen because there was a ready and built-in excuse to put some dinner on the table. On my way into town I'd grabbed a loaf of insufficiently-sturdy sourdough loaf bread, some cheese slices, a few sweet onions, and some ground sirloin. I set out butter to soften for the toasted bread and whipped up the classic burger sauce (recipe below) so it could set up and the flavors meld. After I got changed, I cooked the thin-sliced onions, buttered and toasted the sourdough slices, rolled the ground sirloin as thin as I could get it between sheets of wax paper, and I made us these:

The burger patties ended up smaller than I'd anticipated and the bread was sort of chewy, but the flavors had us all smacking our lips with glad hearts.

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Classic Burger Sauce
from Cook's Illustrated, July-August 2008, p. 11.

4 T mayonnaise
2 T ketchup
1 tsp sweet pickle relish
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl.