Bacon & Cheese-Integrated Burgers

Foodgoat recently came home from work with an urgent mission: a co-worker had reported to him that he had seen, and tasted, a new, and yes, extraordinary, burger.

A burger with bacon and cheese, not on top, but ...ground up into the burger.

Burger innovations cannot wait! Foodgoat came home and fired up the grill as soon as he could.

Bacon & Cheese-Integrated Burgers

The ingredients:

1 lb. ground beef
1/2 lb.bacon, chopped
1/3 lb. cheddar cheese, chopped
1 egg
handful of breadcrumbs
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tsp paprika
salt + pepper + Worcestershire sauce to taste
(makes 4 burgers)

Mix all ingredients with your hands.

Shape into four balls.

Smooosh into patties.

Put on the grill, along with some sliced onions. Beware! The raw bacon in the burgers drips fat right onto the hot coals, creating bursts of hot flame.

Throw some more cheese on! And if you're Foodgoat, you toast the bun. If you're Ladygoat, you like your buns soft.

Yum yum! A success. As expected, the bacon-cheese-grilled-meat combo was not only fun to make, but delicious. Bacon and cheese within the burger, though, turns out to be more subtle - you don't get the concentrated mouthful of bacon or cheese. What you don't get is the contrast between juicy burger, melty cheese, and crisp bacon. It's much more integrated taste and texture. Good, but kind of the same all the way through - none of the interplay between the various elements. So there is something to be said for having the bacon and cheese separate and on top.

Still, it was fun to try. We're always up for burger innovations!

The Theorem of the Cheesy Ratio

After waiting months in the In-and-Out-less Midwest wilderness, Foodgoat finally got to go to In-and-Out again while in California.

The last time he was there, he got a little silly and had a 2x6 - two patties, six slices of cheese. Afterwards, he conceded that it might have been too much cheese.

Being older and wiser, this time he stuck with the more delicious 2x4, animal style.

But while awaiting his order, he noticed the receipt listed a 4x4 animal style. Foodgoat caught a worker and corrected the mistake.

He sat down to eat, only to discover that it had not been corrected at all. He still had a gotten 4x4 animal style. Four meat patties, four slices of cheese. What could he do but eat it?

It was good, but ... it was a lot of meat. A lot of meat.

What does this teach us? Well, it proves Foodgoat's Theorem of the Cheesy Ratio, developed after the 2x6 experiment.

The Theorem of the Cheesy Ratio explains why the 2x4 works by describing the perfect proportion of meat to cheese - of two slices of cheese per one meat patty.

Too much cheese - as in the 2x6, which has three slices of cheese per patty - and the cheese doesn't quite melt right. Thus some of the cheese is a little cold, and the whole meat-cheese tastiness is dependent on adequate meltedness.

Too much meat - as in the case of the 4x4, which has 1 meat patty to 1 slice of cheese - and you don't have enough cheese to balance your meat. This is especially important the higher you go in number - a cheeseburger (1 patty to 1 cheese) may be tolerable if you're of small appetite, but get up to 4x4, and you might feel you're just chewing down a pile of meat without enough cheese to make it worthwhile.

But in the right proportion - as in the 2x4, 2 patties to 4 cheese slices - there you find enough meat to be filling but not overwhelming, enough cheese to be tasty but still melted properly.