Juicy Lucy Burger

The "Juicy Lucy" is a burger with cheese stuffed inside of it, instead of placed on the top like a regular cheeseburger. An American invention (naturally), the result is a huge slab of a burger, packed with hot molten cheese. Guaranteed to cause a mess, and quite possibly scold the roof of your mouth.

So far so good. But this wasn't enough for me, I wanted my own unique twist, something that would really pack a flavour. I considered a few different options, until I settled on a sort of "Tex-Mex" theme... hot chili tomato sauce on one side of the burger, and guacamole on the other.

I made the spicy sauce by frying chopped onion and chili, adding black pepper and cumin, then chucking in some tomato puree, ketchup, Tabasco, and chopped coriander.

The burger was made by sandwiching a big lump of cheese (Cheddar and Gouda) in between two large burgers, and pressing the edges together while it cooked. I squashed the whole thing down as much as possible, but it was still a gargantuan burger. I actually had to put it in the oven to make sure it was cooked through.

This monstrosity - placed between a toasted bun with generous dollops of guacamole and the spicy tomato stuff - is a whole meal in itself. No chips or onion rings necessary, just a comfy chair and a nice cold beer.

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Horse Burgers

So the filthy Tesco burgers were found to contain horse meat. Big deal.

OK, of course I realise that ingredients/packaging should be accurate, people should know what they're eating. But I have absolutely no problem with eating horse meat - in fact, if horse meat is more economical then beef, then maybe we SHOULD be eating it. So I wanted to find out how the taste compared.

Horse meat is not illegal in the UK - in fact, I found a source quite easily on the internet. They also had all kinds of other interesting stuff, from zebra to camel, but I stuck with the horse mince for the purposes of this exercise. It was delivered, frozen and packed in dry ice, the very next day. First impressions were that the meat was dark in colour, and very very lean.

I decided to make three types of burger - horse, beef & horse, and plain beef - and judge which tasted best. Some people will tell you that a burger should contain only meat and seasoning, but horse is a lean meat, and it needs a little something to bind it together. So I added a little beaten egg and olive oil to the mixture, a few breadcrumbs, and a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper.

I then squeezed, scrunched, and kneaded each batch of mixture, to break the meat down and make it all stick together. After resting in the fridge for an hour, it was time to cook them!

The horse burger had a very good flavour - rich, and slightly gamey with a strong iron flavour - but was a little tough and dry. The beef burger was nice and juicy and fatty, but the flavour wasn't as strong as the horse. The best burger, without doubt, was the combined horse and beef!

So this begs the question - were Tesco simply ahead of their time?

Personally I'd love to see horse meat in the shops - hopefully starting with the (correctly labelled) beef and horse quarter pounder!

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Cheeseburger Pizza

I don't believe in new year's resolutions - if you want to do something, just do it. You don't need the excuse of something as arbitrary as the Earth revolving around the Sun. But if I did believe in new year's resolutions, then mine would be to bring you - the fans - an even more outrageous selection of culinary curiosities than last year.

So, many of you will be aware that last year Pizza Hut launched a cheeseburger pizza in the middle east, receiving worldwide media attention and widespread ridicule. Now, personally I have no problem with cheeseburgers on a pizza, but their creation looks truly hideous. Judge for yourself:

Lettuce on a pizza? Yuck. It doesn't even look like a pizza. And the orange stuff doesn't look like cheese. I just knew that I could do better. So finally I got round to it.

I made a sauce from tomato puree, ketchup, chopped tomatoes, and oregano, and microwaved it to break down the tomatoes. I then spread it onto a pizza bread base, before adding bits of mozarella.

Now it was time to turn my attention to the toppings. I reshaped a quarter pounder burger into 4 smaller patties, and quickly fried them to ensure they'd be cooked through. I placed them onto the pizza, topped with thick slices of cheddar, and added some slices of tomato.

I put it into the oven at full blast for about 12 minutes, adding sliced gherkins about halfway through. After cooking, I added a few blobs of mustard onto the pizza.

Having never tasted the Pizza Hut version, I am unable to give a direct comparison. But I know that my version tasted awesome.

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"Malaysian" Burger

When I was (quite a bit) younger, I played in a band... not the greatest band ever, but we played a lot of gigs, and one of my favourite places to visit was Brighton. Fantastic town - cool shops, great pubs, lots of nightlife, great live music scene. Anyway, one of our favourite spots for a post (and often pre) gig snack was a place called Grubbs Burgers. The quality of the burgers themselves was nothing special, but the toppings were outrageous. They included "tropical" (peanut butter, pineapple, banana), "mango curry", and my favourite - "Malaysian" (peanut butter, chilli, lettuce). Dear God.

I've not eaten one of these things in a long, long time. So this seemed like an ideal time to recreate the experience, and share it with my dear readers.

I used normal Sainsbury's burgers from the fresh meat section... I doubt the ones Grubbs used were any better. I only had smooth peanut butter, but I improvised and added some chopped peanuts to make it crunchy. For the chilli sauce, I found two likely candidates in the fridge - some Chinese chili oil, and something labelled "Shu Han's sizzling shit-hot sambal". Sambal is actually and Indonesian / Malaysian chilli condiment, so it seemed perfect. I decided to use both the sambal and the Chinese chili oil.

I fried the burger on a high heat until charred, and mixed the ingredients for the "sauce" together in a bowl. It was very thick at first, so I added a little vegetable oil and some soy sauce.

Finally I assembled the burger.

It tasted amazing. Actually, a hell of a lot better than the Grubbs burger, if my memory serves me correctly. Thanks mainly, I'm sure, to Shu Han's sizzling shizzle (I believe this person is responsible for this awesome substance : http://mummyicancook.blogspot.co.uk/).



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