Hamburgers (p. 510), Cheeseburgers (p. 510), Becker buffalo burgers (p. 531), and Cheese muffins (p. 636)

And now on to supper meal of the Fourth (Fourth of July Blog 2/4)! What is the perfect food for the Fourth? Hamburgers (p. 510), obviously. I think hamburgers are one of the many foods in TJOC that do not require recipes (eventually we will get the recipe I think is the most funny in the entire book--but not yet). I took ground beef, formed it into patties, and then I sprinkled a little salt and pepper on them.



I've been getting slightly concerned with the fact that I have cooked absolutely ZERO recipes from the Game chapter. The problem with the Game chapter is I don't really have anywhere to get rabbit, venison, mountain goat/bighorn sheep, bear, or boar. Neither Josh nor I hunt. Everyone I know who hunts lives ten hours away in Iowa and they mostly hunt gamebirds (which are included in the Poultry and Wildfowl chapter and are also causing me trouble). If you know any place I can get these meats for a reasonable amount of money in Colorado, please let me know.

The only game I can easily get is buffalo, so I picked up a pound while I was at the grocery store and decided to make Becker buffalo burgers (p. 531). The burgers were really easy. I mixed ground buffalo, a little onion, soy sauce, hot sauce, and some fresh ground black pepper and formed the meat into burgers.



The burgers were thrown on the grill. When the burgers were almost done, I covered half of the them with cheese (because they taste so much better that way!) and they became Cheeseburgers (p. 510).



How were they? Delicious! Buffalo can be dry but I think the all the additions made up for that. I like buffalo but I don't like it any more than I like beef, so I don't think it's worth the added money (personally). Even so, I love a good burger.

You can tell from these pictures that I used different plates for the raw and the cooked product--don't cross-contaminate from raw product to cooked product. Just use another dish!

I thought that Cheese muffins (p. 636) would be a terrific accoutrement to the burgers. I often mention that the most difficult foods in TJOC to force myself through are dishes that I (or Josh) already make well. And, honestly, this point is valid because so far very few TJOC recipes have beat my current versions.

Josh doesn't have that many foods that he really likes to cook. But he does have an excellent cheese muffin recipe that tastes EXACTLY like the delicious cheese muffins at Red Lobster. These muffins have impressed EVERYONE they have been served to. So how would TJOC possibly stack up?

It was a pretty similar to the other muffin recipes. Flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt were mixed in one bowl with an egg, milk, and melted butter in another bowl.




A cup of cheddar was then mixed into the dry ingredients.



The dry ingredients were added to the wet ingredients and lightly mixed (always the most important part of any muffin recipe--DO NOT OVERMIX! It is okay if there are lumps).



The muffin batter was then ladled into the muffin pan and baked for about fifteen minutes.



They were delicious! They were not as good as Josh's version but they were really good. I think what I really liked about them was the fact that these were muffins with cheese, not cheese with muffins. They were also very attractive--I thought they were a good, but unexpected, carbohydrate for the meal.