Week 4: Buffalo Burgers

This week I asked my sister what I should cook and the word buffalo rolled off her lips, and I love buffalo. If there's a buffalo burger on a restaurant menu, I will almost always order it. I immediately wanted myself a buffalo burger, so I decided to make one.

I looked around on where else, but FoodNetwork.com, my quick access to a plethora of good recipes. There were a small number of recipes (only 17 recipes, compared to beef burgers which netted a total of 299 recipes). I went against my first impulse to cook Bobby Flay's version to try something a little more basic than his 99 step process which involved making a slaw and mango ketchup. Also, it called for rye bread, which I am not a huge fan of. The next recipe I came across was by a man named George Duran who I had not actually heard of. I decided to take a gamble and bet on his version of the Buffalo Burger.

As my sister was on her way to Whole Foods, I read off the ingredients list, which combines both buffalo meat with a small portion of regular ground chuck (beef), onions, sun-dried tomato paste, and something curiously called Liquid Smoke. As I learned this week, Liquid smoke is an ingredient which is created through the process of trapping smoke from wood chips into water. In this process, carcinogens are removed which makes it a safer alternative to actually smoking the meat, and faster too. Despite my sister's insistence that whole foods would not have it, she did return with a small bottle of the potent smoke water concoction. She did however return with a bottle of sun-dried tomatoes and not the paste, which was unobtainable. I chopped them finely and added them to the mixture. In hindsight, I should have placed them in a food processor instead, thus creating the paste. This was a process which did not occur to me until after I had cooked the burgers.

The buffalo meat surpassed my expectations. I could just tell, while working with it, that the burgers were going to taste extraordinary. Buffalo meat compared to the traditionally used beef, is much leaner having up to 90% less fat, but doesn't lose a bit of flavor. If anything, buffalo is more flavorful. One possible explanation is that buffalo cannot be domesticated like cows can. According to Buffalo Hills Bison, "Bison are handled as little as possible. They spend their lives on grass, much as they always have. They are not subjected to questionable drugs, chemicals or hormones." With raising cows, they are sometimes kept boxed up and fed formula feed and pumped full of steroids.

While cooking the burgers (which came out to 5 large burgers instead of 4 like the recipe said) I noticed the meat sweat a little. With such little fat in the buffalo meat, it must have been the added ground chuck which carried a higher fat content. This helped in keeping the burgers juicy when eating. I served it up with some whole wheat buns, thinly sliced red onion, cheddar cheese and a brown mustard, avocado, and two strips of bacon. It's not a burger until you add your favorite toppings.

The burgers were excellent, savory, and satisfying. The addition of the liquid smoke added a kind of wholesome flavor which tied all the ingredients in the burger together. This turned out to be a great burger, and it was fun learning about some of the unique ingredients.

Week 1: Philly Cheese Steak

The first week of the year is a Friday and Saturday, so I started off with something easy. For the last month I have been craving an honest Philly Cheese Steak. Shockingly, there are no sandwich shops that make the irresistible sandwich in my area. Crazy as that is, I had also never made one, so I went to the first place I could think of, FoodNetwork.com.

I found a few recipes, and I had cooked from Emeril Lagase before so I selected his recipe. Due to copyright laws, it is probably not allowed to post the recipe, but I will provide a link to it if you click here.

To start I read the instructions, and was a little baffled by the step that requires me to pre-heat the oven when it is not used... okay, minor set back, I just won't use the oven. I started by purchasing the ingredients at the the local Holiday Grocery store. After talking to the butcher, using rib-eye would be both costly and it would fall apart after being cut there at the store. He suggested I use a Top Round Steak cut thinly.

According to RecipeTips.com, Top Round is a portion of meat cut from the upper part of the rear leg of the cow. It's a much leaner meat than the original recommendation of rib-eye, and still very flavorful. The Top Round was also a lot cheaper. Hey, I'm on a budget here! If you're big about the nutrition aspect, NutritionData.com states that the Top Round Steak has about 236 calories, 8g of fat, 0g carbs, and 40g of protein for 4 oz of meat (the portion per sandwich). Pretty healthy if you ask me. I ended up buying a pound and making four sandwiches. After purchasing enough ingredients to make 4 sandwiches, the bill was somewhere around 15 dollars.

I cooked three sandwiches with the provolone cheese and one with the American cheese. Both types of sandwiches turned out really well. I did feel that the provolone Cheese Steaks needed a little extra salt. Seeing as how American cheese is about 90% sodium, the other sandwich was perfect. I did add some Veganaise (a mayo alternative) to the sandwich just to give the bread a little extra flavor. Out of the two, I would have to say the American Cheese sandwich was the best, despite the obvious sodium overload.

Not only was the cooking easy, the prep and cook time for the dish was less than 20 minutes. For a cheap quick meal, this was by far the best sandwich I have made. I highly recommend trying this recipe. There is virtually no skill required in making this either, just make sure you have at least one metal spatula to cut the meat during cooking.

Week 1 Successful. My house is not burnt down and the stomach is satisfied.