Ronald McDonald systematically destroyed lunch much in the same way John Wayne Gacy destroyed the wholesome image of clowns. (Technically, the perpetrator was McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, but we prefer to blame Ronald.)
As long as we are slandering cartoon spokesmen, we may as well share our theory that Jabba the Hutt is just Grimace after too many years of eating Happy Meals.
As long as we are slandering cartoon spokesmen, we may as well share our theory that Jabba the Hutt is just Grimace after too many years of eating Happy Meals.
In 1955, McDonald’s introduced the restaurant kitchen to an auto plant assembly line. The theory was that “fast and cheap” would trump “good,” “fresh,” and “healthy.” History tells us that McDonald’s was 100 percent correct. The new standard spread like meth through a rural high school or, if you prefer, like herpes through a university drama club.
Even upscale restaurants, though they are loath to admit it, have been influenced by McDonald’s. Those who still serve lunch have been forced to dumb down their offerings. In order to increase service speed and decrease price, lunch menus tend to rely on simple starches. Truffled mac and cheese may sound fancy, but it is super cheap to make and shows no ill effects from spending all day in a steam drawer. In other words, it has all the same advantages as a Filet-O-Fish sandwich.
After years of cobbling together lunch from a side salad and a couple of non-fried appetizers, we finally happened upon our perfect order: the Burger Salad.
In its simplest form, the Burger Salad is a hamburger, sitting on a bed of lettuce. No bun and definitely no fries. But it can be so much more. Crisp bacon, avocado, grilled onions and even a fried egg all can make the dish as satisfying as the best burgers in the world. The Burger Salad always feels like a treat. It really does feel like cheating on your diet even though it most certainly is not. The only problem is that while it’s easy to find a generic Burger Salad, it’s difficult to track down a really good one.
Here is our advice for ordering the perfect Burger Salad at a restaurant. First, start by ordering a burger, not a salad. We aren’t sure why, but our experience is that adding a burger to a salad seems to confuse and upset wait staff whereas a burger with an added salad makes more sense.
Next, request no bun and substitute a salad for the fries. That’s the Burger Salad in its most basic form. We always ask for extra greens (in other words, we want a BIG salad.) We also specify the dressing in order to avoid having the salad smothered in something sickly sweet.
Now, on to the burger. First and foremost, say yes to add-ons. The more stuff you pile on top the better. If you’re into cheese, this is an excellent time to get some. Remember that you’re eating this with a knife and fork, if it sounds messy, all the better. Finally, be sure to order any and all available condiments, provided they don’t contain sugar. Andrea always gets mayo or aioli. Steven is all about mustard.
Even upscale restaurants, though they are loath to admit it, have been influenced by McDonald’s. Those who still serve lunch have been forced to dumb down their offerings. In order to increase service speed and decrease price, lunch menus tend to rely on simple starches. Truffled mac and cheese may sound fancy, but it is super cheap to make and shows no ill effects from spending all day in a steam drawer. In other words, it has all the same advantages as a Filet-O-Fish sandwich.
After years of cobbling together lunch from a side salad and a couple of non-fried appetizers, we finally happened upon our perfect order: the Burger Salad.
In its simplest form, the Burger Salad is a hamburger, sitting on a bed of lettuce. No bun and definitely no fries. But it can be so much more. Crisp bacon, avocado, grilled onions and even a fried egg all can make the dish as satisfying as the best burgers in the world. The Burger Salad always feels like a treat. It really does feel like cheating on your diet even though it most certainly is not. The only problem is that while it’s easy to find a generic Burger Salad, it’s difficult to track down a really good one.
Here is our advice for ordering the perfect Burger Salad at a restaurant. First, start by ordering a burger, not a salad. We aren’t sure why, but our experience is that adding a burger to a salad seems to confuse and upset wait staff whereas a burger with an added salad makes more sense.
Next, request no bun and substitute a salad for the fries. That’s the Burger Salad in its most basic form. We always ask for extra greens (in other words, we want a BIG salad.) We also specify the dressing in order to avoid having the salad smothered in something sickly sweet.
Now, on to the burger. First and foremost, say yes to add-ons. The more stuff you pile on top the better. If you’re into cheese, this is an excellent time to get some. Remember that you’re eating this with a knife and fork, if it sounds messy, all the better. Finally, be sure to order any and all available condiments, provided they don’t contain sugar. Andrea always gets mayo or aioli. Steven is all about mustard.
Fact: The search for the perfect Burger Salad is a bit like the quest for the Holy Grail. When you find it, you will know. As you search, prepare yourself for some serious disappointments, but as the old cliché goes, you have to kiss a lot of frogs in order to find a prince. Coincidentally, that same philosophy also explains how the entire university drama club came to contract herpes.
Crafting Perfect Burger Salad At Home:
If you want to create amazing burger salads at home, the first thing you should do is ignore all cooking advice from government bureaucrats. According to the USDA, the perfectly grilled hamburger should be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 160°F. Have you tried a 160 degree burger? We have. Andrea described the taste as, “like bobbing for apples in a bag of charcoal.”
Allow us to quote the USDA website: “Many people assume that if a hamburger is brown in the middle, it is done. However, looking at the color and texture of food is not enough - you have to use a food thermometer to be sure! According to USDA research, "one out of every four hamburgers turns brown before it reaches a safe internal temperature.” (Emphasis and exclamation mark theirs.)
If you want to create amazing burger salads at home, the first thing you should do is ignore all cooking advice from government bureaucrats. According to the USDA, the perfectly grilled hamburger should be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 160°F. Have you tried a 160 degree burger? We have. Andrea described the taste as, “like bobbing for apples in a bag of charcoal.”
Allow us to quote the USDA website: “Many people assume that if a hamburger is brown in the middle, it is done. However, looking at the color and texture of food is not enough - you have to use a food thermometer to be sure! According to USDA research, "one out of every four hamburgers turns brown before it reaches a safe internal temperature.” (Emphasis and exclamation mark theirs.)
Fact: Unless you grew up in a vegetarian household, you undoubtedly have attended or even hosted a family barbeque where the burgers cooked for so long that they had more crunch than the potato chips. The important thing to appreciate is that even these burgers may have been undercooked by USDA standards.
In Steven’s family the protocol for dealing with awkward events, such as inedible food served up by an oblivious uncle, was to lie. Take a small bite, smile, nod appreciatively and pretend to enjoy it. Then sneak away and feed the rest to the dog.
Andrea’s family is far more honest. If they don’t like a Christmas present they look the giver straight in the eyes and ask for the gift receipt. Serve one of her brothers a burned burger and you’re likely to hear, “So this is what black lung tastes like.”
To be clear, we’re not recommending you risk your life by eating meat cooked medium rare. We’ll leave that to the Food Network. The Food Network’s website provides a chart contrasting their preferred meat temperatures against the UDSA’s. “Our rule of thumb,” the network states, “is that if we know and trust where our meat comes from, we’re okay sticking a fork in it before the USDA says it’s done.
Fact: The Food Network is run by cowards. They talk a good game, but just below their declaration that USDA warnings need not be heeded is a chart labeled, “Meat and Poultry Temperature Guide.” While every other cut of meat is broken into rare, medium and well done, the chart offers only a single temperature for ground beef: 160°F.
We have watched Bobby Flay’s BBQ Addiction on the Food Network. We have eaten in a number of Flay’s restaurants. He does not practice what his parent company preaches. As far as we can tell, none of their stars do. In fact, if you search the Food Network website, you will find Emeril Lagasse’s recipe for Steak Tartare. (It contains a warning about consuming raw eggs, but completely ignores the risks in consuming raw beef.)
In summary, buns are bad, over-cooking is bad and condiments are good.
Use The Best Meat You Can Find
There is no bun to hide the flavor of mediocre meat. The quality of the ingredients and the preparation are paramount. It’s worth reminding yourself, the burger is the star here, and the quality of burger makes or breaks the meal. Forget about pre-formed, frozen hockey pucks. Stay away from meat that contains highly processed pink slime. The perfect burger cannot be made from inferior ingredients.
Find the best meat you can from a source you trust. For the best results, ask your butcher or meat counter to grind meat fresh for you. They rarely advertise this service, but they almost all offer it. It’s more expensive than buying meat in shrink-wrapped packages, but you really can taste the difference.
Sirloin is the standard cut for burgers, but definitely experiment with others. A good butcher will guide you toward perfection.
Find a butcher who grinds meat daily. Our current favorite source is 4505 Meats in San Francisco. They grind grass-fed, organic beef every morning and usually grind for a second time in the afternoon. We would put their meat up against any fresh grind in the country.
A good rule of thumb is to purchase ⅓ lb. ground beef per person.
Do Not Fear Fat
When it comes to burgers, fat is your friend. Lean beef (95 percent) makes for dry burgers. Do not worry about calories in the beef. Instead, do what we do: skip the bun, chips and high-fructose corn syrup (also known as ketchup). If you are still hungry, eat a second one. Two burgers eaten on salad will contain far fewer calories than a single burger accompanied by all the traditional fixings.
We prefer 80 percent to 85 percent lean beef. There is more moisture and that means more flavor. If it doesn’t drip, you might as well be eating a dried out chicken breast.
Season Your Meat
In your perfect burger mix, spices are your friends; salt is your enemy. Salt acts like a mosquito, sucking all of the moisture and flavor out of the meat. Add herbs, spices, diced onion, garlic and peppers, but add salt only to the outside of the patties and do it just before grilling.
Blend in your spices as gently as possible. Kneading meat leads to dense, rubbery burgers. You goal should be to do the absolute minimum of mixing to distribute the seasoning evenly.
Total seasoning should be around 1 teaspoon per pound of meat. It’s obvious but nonetheless worth stating – the teaspoon per pound rule can vary with intense ingredients. A teaspoon of finely chopped habanero pepper, for example, would be enough to render a pound of meat inedible to most of the population.
Pack Your Patties Loosely
The ads in the back of comic books for the Charles Atlas Dynamic-Tension bodybuilding system presented a muscle-bound man pressing the palm of his hands together as though he was trying to crush a lump of coal into a diamond. A lot of people have adopted this model for patty forming. This is a terrible idea.
A good burger will have air pockets where the fat has dripped away. Compressing the meat prevents these air pockets from forming and gives the resulting burgers a meatball-like density.
Be firm with the meat. Don’t leave it so loose that it falls apart on the grill, but don’t make it a strength-training exercise. You want air pockets to form.
The leaner your meat, the looser your burgers should be packed. For example, buffalo burgers - which are nearly as lean as chicken breasts - should be right on the edge of breaking apart. Since there is not enough fat to drip out and form air pockets, these hollows must be produced as part of the patties. The only way to accomplish this is to pack the meat as loosely as possible.
One last thing: don’t press on your burgers with a spatula. It adds unwanted density while squeezing out flavor.
Let Your Meat Rest
For years, we assumed that it was normal to take a bite of a burger and watch all of the juices rush out like a waterfall on the plate. It turns out that resting the meat after cooking it can minimize this phenomenon.
Use the rule of fives. Pull the burgers five degrees before they reach your desired temperature. Cover them with foil and allow them to rest for five full minutes. The meat will continue cooking to the desired temperature. It will also reabsorb all of the moisture, resulting in perfectly juicy burgers.
You can quickly sear the burgers on the grill after the rest if the temperature has dropped too much. Otherwise, simply serve and enjoy.
Make A Salad Worthy Of Your Burger
Use any of our Salad Dressing recipes. All of these will compliment your burger. The only additional advice we can offer is always use the freshest ingredients you can find and make twice as much salad as you think that you will need. It really is that good.
The Risk-Taker’s, Adrenaline Junkie Guide To Burger Temperature
We recommend using a thermometer for cooking burgers, but our reason is the opposite of that advocated by the USDA. The primary purpose of a thermometer is to ensure meat is not overcooked. Certainly, it will provide feedback if the center of your burger is still raw, but the vast majority of the time temperature readings are all about determining when to pull the meat to allow it to rest.
There is some disagreement over how to construct the final burger salad. Some people place the burger onto a bed of salad and then bury it in toppings. It looks nice, but the heat from the burger tends to wilt the lettuce. We serve our burgers and toppings next to the salad and then combine all of the ingredients bite by bite. Either way, we are sure you will love the results.
There is no bun to hide the flavor of mediocre meat. The quality of the ingredients and the preparation are paramount. It’s worth reminding yourself, the burger is the star here, and the quality of burger makes or breaks the meal. Forget about pre-formed, frozen hockey pucks. Stay away from meat that contains highly processed pink slime. The perfect burger cannot be made from inferior ingredients.
Find the best meat you can from a source you trust. For the best results, ask your butcher or meat counter to grind meat fresh for you. They rarely advertise this service, but they almost all offer it. It’s more expensive than buying meat in shrink-wrapped packages, but you really can taste the difference.
Sirloin is the standard cut for burgers, but definitely experiment with others. A good butcher will guide you toward perfection.
Find a butcher who grinds meat daily. Our current favorite source is 4505 Meats in San Francisco. They grind grass-fed, organic beef every morning and usually grind for a second time in the afternoon. We would put their meat up against any fresh grind in the country.
A good rule of thumb is to purchase ⅓ lb. ground beef per person.
Do Not Fear Fat
When it comes to burgers, fat is your friend. Lean beef (95 percent) makes for dry burgers. Do not worry about calories in the beef. Instead, do what we do: skip the bun, chips and high-fructose corn syrup (also known as ketchup). If you are still hungry, eat a second one. Two burgers eaten on salad will contain far fewer calories than a single burger accompanied by all the traditional fixings.
We prefer 80 percent to 85 percent lean beef. There is more moisture and that means more flavor. If it doesn’t drip, you might as well be eating a dried out chicken breast.
Season Your Meat
In your perfect burger mix, spices are your friends; salt is your enemy. Salt acts like a mosquito, sucking all of the moisture and flavor out of the meat. Add herbs, spices, diced onion, garlic and peppers, but add salt only to the outside of the patties and do it just before grilling.
Blend in your spices as gently as possible. Kneading meat leads to dense, rubbery burgers. You goal should be to do the absolute minimum of mixing to distribute the seasoning evenly.
Total seasoning should be around 1 teaspoon per pound of meat. It’s obvious but nonetheless worth stating – the teaspoon per pound rule can vary with intense ingredients. A teaspoon of finely chopped habanero pepper, for example, would be enough to render a pound of meat inedible to most of the population.
Pack Your Patties Loosely
The ads in the back of comic books for the Charles Atlas Dynamic-Tension bodybuilding system presented a muscle-bound man pressing the palm of his hands together as though he was trying to crush a lump of coal into a diamond. A lot of people have adopted this model for patty forming. This is a terrible idea.
A good burger will have air pockets where the fat has dripped away. Compressing the meat prevents these air pockets from forming and gives the resulting burgers a meatball-like density.
Be firm with the meat. Don’t leave it so loose that it falls apart on the grill, but don’t make it a strength-training exercise. You want air pockets to form.
The leaner your meat, the looser your burgers should be packed. For example, buffalo burgers - which are nearly as lean as chicken breasts - should be right on the edge of breaking apart. Since there is not enough fat to drip out and form air pockets, these hollows must be produced as part of the patties. The only way to accomplish this is to pack the meat as loosely as possible.
One last thing: don’t press on your burgers with a spatula. It adds unwanted density while squeezing out flavor.
Let Your Meat Rest
For years, we assumed that it was normal to take a bite of a burger and watch all of the juices rush out like a waterfall on the plate. It turns out that resting the meat after cooking it can minimize this phenomenon.
Use the rule of fives. Pull the burgers five degrees before they reach your desired temperature. Cover them with foil and allow them to rest for five full minutes. The meat will continue cooking to the desired temperature. It will also reabsorb all of the moisture, resulting in perfectly juicy burgers.
You can quickly sear the burgers on the grill after the rest if the temperature has dropped too much. Otherwise, simply serve and enjoy.
Make A Salad Worthy Of Your Burger
Use any of our Salad Dressing recipes. All of these will compliment your burger. The only additional advice we can offer is always use the freshest ingredients you can find and make twice as much salad as you think that you will need. It really is that good.
The Risk-Taker’s, Adrenaline Junkie Guide To Burger Temperature
- Rare: 125°
- Medium-Rare: 130°
- Medium: 140°
- Medium-Well: 150°
- Well-Done (USDA rare): 160°
We recommend using a thermometer for cooking burgers, but our reason is the opposite of that advocated by the USDA. The primary purpose of a thermometer is to ensure meat is not overcooked. Certainly, it will provide feedback if the center of your burger is still raw, but the vast majority of the time temperature readings are all about determining when to pull the meat to allow it to rest.
There is some disagreement over how to construct the final burger salad. Some people place the burger onto a bed of salad and then bury it in toppings. It looks nice, but the heat from the burger tends to wilt the lettuce. We serve our burgers and toppings next to the salad and then combine all of the ingredients bite by bite. Either way, we are sure you will love the results.
