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Saturday, July 20, 2013

Meal No. 776: Humdinger Hamburgers

I've got several great burger recipes that please my palate and that also seem to go over well with guests, including Juicy Burgers on the Grill, Peanut Butter-Bacon Burgers, and Bulgogi Burgers. Tonight I thought I'd see what the kamado grill could do with burgers and used Cheryl and Bill Jamison's recommendation for what they call "Humdinger Hamburgers." With these, you mix minced onion and minced chili peppers into ground chuck, and I used the Jamisons' spice rub recommendation of Wild Willy's Number One-derful Rub and then I let the rub and smoke do the rest.


Which means these were more smoked than grilled: you keep the deflector stone in place and keep the temps relatively low for an hour-long cook. I'd say they were OK but not necessarily humdingers. I do need to try doing these in grilling/direct heat mode sometime, just to see what I think. I'd make the patties much thinner, though, so that they're cooked to the temp that I'm accustomed to and prefer for hamburgers. Sometime I'll put to the test their Jamaican take on these burgers. If so, you'll read about it right here.


The accompaniment was a new recipe, which was passed on to me by my good friend Sheryl in California. It's baked onion rings with a chipotle ranch dressing, and they were good. I had seconds of those, for sure. I believe I will work on the dressing a bit and see if I can make it much less thin. It was a nice flavor, too.

Dessert was a new adventure: éclairs. I love éclairs, and I don't recall anyone doing them homemade save for one distant relative who's not all that good a cook (or that nice a person). I've been hankering to give these a try for a while, and yesterday just seemed like the time.

The initial baking of the pastry shells gave me great hope that I might be on the right track, because they came out mighty purty:


I chose the easy route on the pastry filling, a slightly souped up batch of Jell-O instant vanilla pudding. I reached for my rarely used pastry bag to squirt these rascals full. After dinner, I heated up the chocolate and dipped them upside down in it.


Perfect!





"Humdinger Hamburgers" (p. 133-134). In Smoke & Spice, by Cheryl and Bill Jamison. Boston: The Harvard Common Press, 2003.

"Baked Onion Rings with Chipotle Ranch Dressing," from Real Simple magazine, May 2013, p. 226.

"Cream Puffs and Éclairs," from the folks at King Arthur Flour and available online.

Kamado Meal #15

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