Jhorts & Burgers

When I first met S, he was wearing jhorts to a pool party I was hosting and kinda looked like this:

No lie.  How could I not fall madly in love with that?  He also brought his Kindle, flirted with my best friend, and talked incessantly (in my opinion) about rowing.  Rowing?  Rowing as in Crew.  As in pretty much the most preppy/elitist sport I could think of.  So what did I do?  Mocked him mercilessly.  I'm nice like that, what can I say?  Also, I couldn't help imagining just how many popped collars he could simultaneously wear:

So yes, I made fun of him.

Here's an example:

S: My office is the river.  It's amazing to see the sunrise every morning as you jet down the water.  We keep all of the boats at the boathouse on the river for easy access.

Me: <faking a pretentious accent> Mmmmm.  The boathouse.  Yes, my father once had a boathouse but it wasn't big enough for his yacht, so we had to have it removed board by board.  We then commissioned an artist to rebuild the boathouse using only the original wood or wood cultivated from the rainforests of the Amazon and made to look like the original wood by bleaching with Pygmy spit.  The rebuild took 7 years but it was ah-mazing.

I digress. 

The moral of this story is that even if you're drunk and not so nice to a boy when you first meet him, if you make burgers that are delicious, he'll still fall in love with you.  Fact.

The day of the pool party, this is the recipe I used (give or take, I really never measure, so feel free to change things if you're feeling sassy):

Mini Bacon Chile Cheese Burgers

3 lbs ground beef (I use 90/10)

1 lb bacon 

2 Anaheim chiles 

8 oz grated Mexican cheese blend

Susie Q aka "crack seasoning" you can get this here or just use your own mix of parsley (~4 Tb), salt (~3 Tb) and pepper (~2 Tb)

Hawaiian Rolls


Take the bacon and cut into roughly 1/8" strips.

Add the bacon to a bowl (I started with a glass bowl and had to move to my wok since it's the biggest bowl like thing I had in my kitchen).  Make sure to separate out the slices (they will want to stick together):

Since I have an electric range (sad panda), I have to roast my Anaheim chiles in the broiler.  This works well, but the gas range technique is much more fun.  Several roasting techniques can be found here.


Take the two chiles:

Slice into halves length wise and take out the seeds and stems:

I then placed on a skillet under my broiler set to high and watched them carefully until all of the skin was dark and bubbling:

 Let them cool, then take off the skins (should be easy to remove) and cut into 1/4" pieces:

Place the meat, chiles and cheese in the bowl with the seasoning:

Then mix gently.   The key here is to gently mix.  Use your hands and don't squeeze until you're actually forming patties (upgraded to larger container):

 Take about a large golf ball sized chunk of the mixture and form into a patty about 3 inches in diameter.  Pack tightly at this point as the delicious (but fatty) bacon will reduce at a different speed than the beef when grilled and you don't want your patties to fall apart.  

Repeat with all of the remaining mixture.

Grill on a ten-second fire (if you can place your hand over the grill and have to remove your hand around ten seconds) until you see juices form on top of the patty or around 4 minutes.  Flip and grill for a couple more minutes.  

Remove patties and lightly toast Hawaiian Rolls on the grill.

Serve with normal condiments or with just mayo.  (I don't have any after pictures as we took them to a party this time and there was a keg involved and maybe a pinata, don't really remember all of the details...).

Delicious!