The Lazy Gourmet

[Oerdin]

Sloppy Joes are perfect for little kids to learn to cook because the directions are easy,  presentation is simply slopping them on a bun,  and it is near impossible to get it wrong.   So they figure out cooking is both fun and easy.

[Dale]

Spag Bol and stir fry is also great for kids.  Fry the onion, brown the meat, add the sauce and vegies then simmer.

My eldest made our spag bol last night and it was great.  I usually teach the kids stir fries at scouts as it's a hearty one pan dinner.

[Unorthodox]

The Sloppy Joes were pretty solid.  We do them in the crock pot and cook over 8 hours.  Usually mix the night before and just take it out of the fridge and turn on the crock the next day.   

I try to have the kids cook once a week so they'll have some basics down when they leave the house.  Kyle (17) is learning finesse cooking, gravies, how to tell when meat is done, stuff recipes don't teach you.  Alec (13) is learning to follow recipes.  Talia (9) is learning how to turn on the oven/microwave and read instructions on premade stuff like chicken nuggets. 

They also do their own laundry from the time they can reach.  Equal parts mean, lazy and good parenting as far as I'm concerned. 

[Buster's Uncle]

  Those are all non-optional life skills, if you ask me.  Make 'em all learn how to thread a needle and stich a few stitches, too.

I had to teach Mylochka how to make gravy when she was 50.  I was appalled.

[Oerdin]

I am guessing,  from her name, that she is from Russia so they may have a different culinary tradition which doesn't use gravy so it is perhaphs understandable that she was unfamiliar with it.  Just my thoughts.

Oh,  both yesterday and today will be left overs days.   I need to use some of the left overs up before I make more.   Waste not,  want not,  and all that.

[Buster's Uncle]

Naw, that's a username - my sister, and a bubba like me - just didn't learn as much "girl chore" skills from Momma as Buster's Daddy and I did.

(-Not actually like me, though; she's Dr. Mylochka, and that's The Reverend Dr. Buster's Daddy these last six months...)

[Oerdin]

I just made a breakfast burrito.   Scrambled eggs,  sausage,  diced onion,  pan fried potatos,  and diced tomato all topped with Sriracha &  cheese then wrapped in a flour tortilla.

[Unorthodox]

I did breakfast burritos for dinner last week. 

Steaks on tap for tonight.  I'll post up my grilled potatoes as well. 

[Buster's Uncle]

I did Chicken Raku for supper again yesterday - was going to fry chicken, but we half-expected some family over, and they don't make frying pans big enough.  Ended up they didn't show, and we only ate half the Raku, but that's not a bad thing...

[Unorthodox]

dox family spiced potatoes.  Used camping, stovetop, grilled, whatever. 

Canned "new potatoes" chopped.  I just buy the diced now.  Garlic powder, salt (kosher), pepper (seasoned pepper), and onions (fresh or dried).  1 TBL butter per can



Camping/grill:  put it all in tin foil and roll all seems together.  Cook on low heat 30 minutes.  (charcoal, shoot for indirect heat, rake the coals away)



Stovetop: covered frying pan on medium heat 20 minutes. 

[Unorthodox]

Alright, it's grilling season, and with the house being torn apart, I'm looking at plenty of it over the summer (winter for Dale). 

So, let me hear about your burger secrets. 

First, IMO, there's two ways people try to make a good burger.  Fixins or mixins. 

Fixin wise, the most Utah thing out there is:

Blue Bacon Burger:  Utah original (fairly well documented), though some national chains are making poor knockoffs lately.  Basic burger patty, thick bacon, swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato and Blue cheese dressing. 

Mount Ogden Burger:  The other claimed Utah original, seen it much more widely across the country, Patty, ham, swiss, lettuce, tomato, "Fry Sauce" (this is a totally Utah thing, but thousand island dressing is a common substitute) 

It's the mixins I'm more interested in. 

A little history with me:

We were dirt poor, and mom approached burgers as an economic way of feeding the family.  Anything that would extend that meat was fair game.  Thus, for most my childhood burgers were closer to meatloaf.  Always a package of lipton onion soup mix was going to be in.  Most common other items to mix into the burger were zucchini and carrots.  Oats, bread crumbs, etc were never unheard of.  Add an egg or two if they don't want to stay stuck together. 

By comparison, the prepacked patties they now use are tasteless. 

About 20 years ago, I found a pile of recipes in my grandma's trash bin.  Among these is a depression era recipe for hamburgers, and it's become the basis of my own tinkering since.  Though, I've yet to take it all the way to it's ultimate step. 

It goes thus: 

The recipe calls for getting castoffs from the butcher, with certain cuts to look for to run through your meat grinder.  Jumping it into today, you want equal parts ground sirloin and ground chuck.  This yields a fairly lean burger. 

Mix that together, and smash it all as flat as you can make it.  To this, you're going to add your spices.  Now the recipe gets lost here with pieces impossible to reproduce ('grandpa's mustard' and 'moms chili paste' are just nowhere to be found).  But the gist of it still lives. 

Make a paste out of liquid and dry spices.

Last night, I used Dijon mustard with a bit of soy sauce and Cholula hot sauce mixed with garlic salt, pepper, minced onions, and thyme. 

Anyway, spread the paste evenly across your flattened ground beef.  Roll it up into a loaf, and knead it until mixed.  Spread flat and repeat. 

Make your patties.  This is where I break from the recipe, make thick burgers and grill. 

The recipe calls for thin patties.  WHICH YOU THEN ROLL IN PEANUTS and fry.  (Peanuts at the time of the great depression were extremely economical and would have been a great way to extend your meat)  One of these days I'll work up the courage to try the peanuts, but I don't know how that'll fair on the grill, and I don't care for fried burgers much. 

[Buster's Uncle]

A big thick patty is easier to cook just so than a thin/small one, as is generally true of meats.  If I'm forming the patties myself, I go for covering my whole palm and try to make the edges slightly thicker than the middle to work against the tendency of ground beef to contract into a sphere as it cooks.  My patties are a bit labor-intensive getting those edges smoothed, but the end-product is better.

[Dale]

Burgers, no idea.  Wife makes ours and they are fantastic.

I just cook 'em and eat 'em.

[Rusty Edge]

Here the popular high end grocery store premixed options are blue cheese of some kind,
 bacon cheddar, mushroom swiss, or tailgate burger which usually is something like bacon/cheddar/Jim Beam barbecue sauce. Although being Wisconsin, other kinds of cheese are fair game for burgers, too.

We tend to mix and match when we buy those. .

I've gotta figure something out for dinner tonight...I feel a mixed grill in the near future.

[Buster's Uncle]

Momma used to mix in so much oatmeal and ketchup into the burger meat when I was a kid the grease would stain the bread orange w/o anything else on it yet - then she figured out it wasn't the great depression anymore, and it's pure ground beef, now.  I wish I could get her to add a pinch of salt, actually.