12 July, 2008

HAM burger

Ham-Burger

Do you remember the ads for A1 Steak sauce proclaiming a hamburger is not chopped ham but chopped steak? As a considered rebuttal to that 80's ad, I offer the HAM-burger. Pictured above the ground cured pork burger is dressed with mustard, ketchup, cheese, roasted jalapenos, caramelized onions in sour cream (à la Bonne Femme), tomato, lettuce and mayonaise, all set on a bun made with "Five minute a day dough."

Ham-Burger Bonne Femme

Okay Bonne Femme says I need to take a picture of her burger too. She topped hers with a cole slaw (left over from yesterday's fish taco adventure) made with cabbage, beets, and carrots.

But I didn't set out to make hamburgers. It's been a little more than a week since we returned from our madcap EU adventure and I needed to restock the cured meats cabinet. I made up a brine (loosely based on Charcuterie's American Style Brown Sugar Glazed Holiday Ham recipe) and sunk some pork belly and some pieces of boneless ham. After three days I pulled the pieces from their salty sleep and today I tied them into roasts. While tying the roasts I ended up with some trimmings. Now if I had been really ambitious I used the cured pork trimmings in a Toulouse sausage, but I'm still jet lagged or I drank a lot of beer last night (with fish tacos!) Hey Presto HAM-Burgers. I'm smoking the ham and bacon tomorrow.

Hey check it out, I found the A1 commercial:



Cheers.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That could also be a considered a MANwich, no?

Andrew said...

Looks good-was your bun from the artisan bread in five minutes book? If so, how do you like it?

mac said...

Dear Andrew:
Yeah, sort of. The dough formula is from a Chicago Tribune article touting the book, "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking" by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. After I read the article I ran to the library to check the book out. I found that I couldn't get past the the first few pages due to the authors' (or editor's) infomercial writing style. I bake bread on a weekly basis and I didn't feel that I needed to "revolutionize" my process. That said, Bonne Femme loves the dough, she uses it for pizza crusts, buns, whatever she wants, quick. And the buns were good. Our dough has probably 20% whole wheat and 80% bread flour. I'll send you the article. Thanks for writing.