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Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Burgers and Comedy

Last night I outdid myself with some awesome burgers and a great flick...

My burgers (tentatively titled the WannaSnort, after the awesome burgers I had last weekend):
1 pound 85% lean ground beef (if you can find fattier meat, you're better off)
1 tsp. Louisiana Hot Sauce
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
olive oil and a brush
2 over-sized hamburger buns
cream cheese of indeterminate amount
ditto with diced jalapenos (a jar of them works just fine - green chilis would work well, too)

Mix everything together except the olive oil, the buns, the cream cheese, and the diced jalapenos. Season a skillet with your olive oil if you're frying them. If not, chill... we'll come back to it in a second. Mix it the meat with a fork instead of your hands. That way your selfish hands don't steal all the burger grease. Make two patties. That's right... two. Two being the number of patties, having passed the number one, and proceeding directly to two. Three is right out. Once you have two patties, two being the correct number of burger patties to be made, pour a little of that olive oil in a bowl or just drizzle it on both sides of the patties. Use that brush of yours to even it out, to give them a good coating of goodness. Then, set your cooking device to a medium heat setting and cook your burgers up. The olive oil gives the meat a nice crispy outside yet keeps the inside all sorts of juicy and delicious.

When you serve them up, it's best to have some over-sized, hearty buns of some sort, like Kaiser rolls or big sandwich hoagie buns or something like that. When the burgers are almost done cooking, bust out a hearty amount of plain cream cheese and throw a layer on the bottom bun, let's say almost 1/4" thick. That gives the meat a nice place to live for a few minutes. Move the meat into position on the cheese, and grab those bits of jalapeno and put a layer of these on top of your burger. Then put the top of the bun on your monster and proceed to make it disappear.

I managed to pair this burger with some barbeque Lays chips and the movie "Men Who Stare At Goats", which was dry, but hilarious as a result. Burgers and gluttony seem to go well with a movie which makes you laugh so hard, you seem to forget about the heart attack you're going to have 10 years too early. The premise of this movie was the hidden and secret formation of a "psychic spy" unit of the United States Army, including a man with the power to stare at a goat until it's heart stopped. As horrific as this sounds, it was actually very funny and well done. George Clooney and Jeff Bridges stole the show, and Kevin Spacey, as oddly evil and intimidating as he could be, made me laugh more than once. The high parts for me were Ewan MacGregor, Obi-Wan Kenobi in the new Star Wars movies, asking very honestly and innocently Clooney what a Jedi was... classic!