escapades in the kitchen: burgers

One of the best things about warm weather is grilling.

It's just so OPPRESSIVE cooking in the kitchen when the weather turns hot -- even more so if, like me, you have a small kitchen with less ventilation than a tomb. Besides which, there's really no comparison between looking out a window and being outside the window. (Get me Out of Doors in summer, as much as possible -- and one of the best assets of my house is its wide, gracious covered front porch, where I can sit in comfort even in a downpour.)

Yesterday, feeling an aversion to the indoors and a distinct laziness about having to fiddle with stovetop knobs and run up the indoor temperature, I bought a couple pounds of ground beef and went to work making hamburgers.

(Now, one thing any of my readers must realize is that I. Love. Meat. Beef, pork, lamb, venison, poultry, fish -- I love it all. I will occasionally go vegeterian for a short period of time, because it feels lighter, but on the whole I enjoy using my incisors, eyeteeth and canines for their intended purpose.)

I decided to try something a little different from my usual method of seasoning the outside of the burger; this time, I thought, I'd season it all the way through.

There are no real measurements, and working with raw meat is always interesting because you don't know what "to taste" means until after you've cooked it. I recommend going with your instincts. Here's what I put in:

- seasoned salt
- garlic powder
- onion powder
- ground black pepper
- ground red pepper
- ground cumin
- Worcestershire sauce
- sherry vinegar

I placed the ground beef (80/20 -- lean beef, unfortunately, doesn't make very good burgers; the fat makes the flavor) in a large mixing bowl, added all seasonings generously, until I could start to smell it (meaning it was quite well seasoned, since the smell of raw meat is a bit overwhelming), and mixed everything together by hand. The rest was as usual: form into patties, season the tops with a little more Worcestershire sauce, and grill.

I found that I could make about eight burgers out of the two pounds of ground beef. Being inordinately indolent after work, I decided to vacuum seal and freeze the leftover patties individually -- that way all I have to do is throw one in the fridge in the morning, and throw it on the grill when I get home from work.

And doing it all that way is a LOT cheaper than buying the premade burger patties in the store.

Plus the flavor of the meat and the mixed-in seasoning was EXCELLENT. The burger barely needed condiments.