{"id":610,"date":"2007-03-11T15:45:04","date_gmt":"2007-03-11T20:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/610"},"modified":"2007-03-11T15:45:04","modified_gmt":"2007-03-11T20:45:04","slug":"hamburgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/610","title":{"rendered":"Hamburgers&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;can be really decadent if you add a little ground pork to the ground beef.&nbsp; Also, grilling is better then frying.\n<\/p>\n<p>Obviously I&#8217;m not a vegan.&nbsp; But my beef intake these days is way, way down from what it was, simply because my body doesn&#8217;t do really heavy eating anymore.&nbsp; I used to hit the steak houses regularly.&nbsp; It think it&#8217;s been five years or more since I was last in one.&nbsp; But I still do the local rib joints here in Baltimore.&nbsp; This town has some fantastically good ones.<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m experimenting in the kitchen some today.&nbsp; Since I stopped going to the fast food joints (except for Subway and Quiznos), I&#8217;m missing the occasional hamburger out of my diet.&nbsp; I like a good burger.&nbsp; But I don&#8217;t trust the meat in fast food joints anymore, and if I want to keep somewhat trim I need to not eat fatty meats so often anyway.&nbsp; What I&#8217;m trying to do now is make my own burgers, from leaner, more wholesomely raised meats, and prepare it in smaller portions that more exactly fit my appetite.&nbsp; The burgers served at most restaurants are way too big for me.\n<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;ve been reading that lean beef is actually not wonderful for making burgers.&nbsp; On a lark I bought some ground pork and made a burger out of about a quarter pork and three quarters lean beef.&nbsp; I kneaded it together with some ground pepper, garlic powder, a touch of Cayenne pepper, and a little fresh diced onion (again, from Whole Foods).&nbsp; Oh&#8230;and a pinch of finely ground beef bullion cube.&nbsp; I made a test patty, flat, because I want it cooked thoroughly in the middle, and about the size of the palm of my hand, which is about the right size for me.&nbsp; I eat small portions&#8230;always have.&nbsp; My diet problems come mostly from between meal junk snacking, which I won&#8217;t do anymore.\n<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d bought a Delonghi electric grill some months back, and instead of firing up my trusty old Lodge cast iron griddle, I brought that out instead, because I hadn&#8217;t tried it with burgers yet.&nbsp; It&#8217;s an interesting design: the grill grate itself is the heating element, as opposed to a rack of iron sitting just over top the usual electric one.&nbsp; It does a great job of cooking and searing meat.&nbsp; The beef\/pork burger I got off it was positively decadent.<\/p>\n<p>The nice thing about meat is you can freeze it and it will keep for quite a long time.&nbsp; I&#8217;m going to make myself up as many burger pattys as I can out of the beef and pork I just bought, then put them in the freezer for later use.&nbsp;  I&#8217;ll add the seasonings when I thaw them out for use. This is much better then the fast food burgers I&#8217;d been buying.\n<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m out for a stroll with one of my cameras next.&nbsp; The weather is getting nice again here in Baltimore now.&nbsp; Then tonight I want to sit down in my art room, and try to get my drawing bug back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8230;can be really decadent if you add a little ground pork to the ground beef.&nbsp; Also, grilling is better then frying. Obviously I&#8217;m not a vegan.&nbsp; But my beef intake these days is way, way down from what it was, simply because my body doesn&#8217;t do really heavy eating anymore.&nbsp; I used to hit the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}