079/18 – OMFG Burger:
OMFG Burger? Why is it called that? Because OMFG is what I said straight after the first bite!
As you will see in some of the previous posts on the blog I have done a few burgers over time and I am gradually tweaking little details to try and get a better burger each time. The last 3 were some of the best so far:
I have been a big fan of the BSR burgers from Turner and George but I now wanted to move on and grind my own meat and explore different blends to find the best combination. Having a read through the Hang Fire Cookbook again I spotted a burger blend that sounded really interesting so I went for that this time.
The Meat:
Chuck, Skirt, Brisket and Bone Marrow all from Turner and George. I had extra Bavette (Skirt) left over so used it for Fajitas and needed Brisket to make Pastrami so trimmed off what I needed for the burgers.
The Grind:
A while back I bought this cracking little grinder from Weschenfelder Direct. It’s the El Young No. 8 Electric Mincer – £192.
I took the mincer apart and put all the bits in the freezer for half an hour. I also cut the meat into fairly small chunks and put it into the freezer for half an hour as well. 
This worked well as the mincer did it’s job with no issues at all!
Apologies for the unsteady filming!
The Prep:
I am a big fan of the Hamburger Buns in the Byron Cookbook. You add Vitamin C to the dough to make it fluffier! A few things I changed this time:
- I remembered to add water to the yeast mix!
- Left the yeast mix for half an hour instead of 15 minutes.
- On the 2nd stage I put the dough balls onto the trays they were going to cook on as moving them before caused them to knock down.
- Before adding cling film I put a bit of flour on the dough balls to stop the cling film sticking.
- As soon as the egg wash went on I put the tray in the oven to stop the dough ball sinking.
Buns finished, they looked great!
I have tried a few different methods with bacon over the years and the overwhelming advice (and my best results so far!) are to cook it in the oven on a foiled tray at 190c for 15 minutes. The bacon was my own cured and smoked streaky bacon. Pork belly from Turner and George, cured in Holy F**k from the Ribman and smoked with Whisky Oak for 60 hours. You can cook it on the BBQ with the burger but I haven’t managed to get it looking like this yet!
At this point I made a burger sauce, adapted from the Jamie Oliver Insanity Burgers – Tomato Ketchup, Mayonnaise, Worcestershire Sauce, Chipotle Tabasco and Maldon Sea Salt.
The burgers had been made the night before so I had vacuum packed them all and frozen some. These were just in the fridge.
On to the tray
Plenty of salt and pepper.
The Charcoal:
Really enjoying cooking on Oxford Charcoal Oak Lumpwood lately. I hadn’t cooked on my Weber Kettle for a while so fired up the chimney starter and poured the lit charcoal into charcoal baskets in the kettle and moved them to the centre of the grill.
The Cook:
With the charcoal lit I placed the grill in the kettle then put my grill grates on top but inverted to create a griddle. I left it for 5 to 10 minutes to heat up then placed the burgers on.
A couple of minutes later, flipped over. Nice crust on that side. 
Another couple of minutes and I put the cheese slice on mine. I then poured some water on the grill and put the lid on. Not in the photo but I was toasting the buns at this time too.
Time to Serve:
Toasted bun, burger sauce, burger (with cheese) and some bacon.
Burger sauce on the top bun then placed on top. It looked immense!
2nd burger for my wife (without cheese) – also looking great!
SUMMARY:
Where to begin? I was blown away by this one! The first bite was just fantastic, the burger tasted great but was so juicy, really, really juicy! The buns were my best yet, much lighter but firm enough to contain the juice and hold together. The sauce worked well and the bacon was my best cured/smoked bacon so far but cooking it in the oven cooked it perfectly. Trying to think how to improve on this and so far have only come up with adding some pickles and experimenting with the meat blends more. Looking forward to eating more of these though!
| Cook Difficulty: | 2/5 |
| Cook Duration: | Short: 2/5 |
| Cook Equipment: | Weber Kettle |
| Cook Method: | Inverted Grill Grates |
| Charcoal: | Oxford Charcoal Oak |
| Smoking Wood: | N/A |
| Cook temperature: | N/A |
| Cook time: | 10 minutes |
| Internal temperature: | 65c (Thermapen) |
| Notes: | 1: No major changes. Maybe add some pickles? |
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