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 Best Meal Foodgoat Forgot About

Memorial Day weekend! The start of grilling season!

Foodgoat got a head start - making this delicious brisket. However, it didn't quite go as planned.

The original plan: put a dry rub on the brisket overnight, smoke it slowly outside for several hours, and enjoy a nice piece of well-cooked meat for dinner.

It started off right - he got a nice piece of brisket, covered it with spicy dry rub (mostly paprika, but with lots of other spices) he made himself, and put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, he took it out and put in the grill with a not too hot fire to smoke. In the meantime, he got out the brand new rototiller to prepare the garden patch.

And that's when the plan veered off course.

Because ripping up dirt with a gas motor and fierce blades is FUN.

He not only got our regular garden tilled and turned and ready for planting, he expanded it by about 60%!

He had so much fun, he took the rototiller to Culturefilter's house to till away the afternoon there too.

A couple of tilled plots and several beers later, Foodgoat realized he had left the brisket at home, still smoking away five hours later. So he went back, pulled the still warm brisket off, and popped it in the fridge.

The next day, the brisket went into the crock pot with barbeque sauce, gin, and a couple of other things that he happened to have on hand, and there it cooked for another couple of hours.

The results though were yummy - smoky, flavorful, and very tender and just perfect for sandwiches.



So the actual process turned out to be: put a dry rub on a brisket overnight, smoke for a couple of hours, get drunk on power tools and beer, forget about the brisket, put brisket in fridge, cook brisket in crock pot for several more hours.