Food with My Dude #2: Freshly Ground Jalapeño-Garlic Hamburgers

Who’s hungry for a hamburger recipe?

In order to make this recipe, you’ll need a meat grinder. We got one for Christmas a couple years ago because Stephen has always wanted to make homemade hamburgers. I’ve never been a huge fan of hamburgers, but when I say that I mean that you would probably not ever see me ordering a hamburger at a restaurant — not downing on those that do, but they never catch my eye.

Freshly Ground Jalapeño-Garlic Hamburgers

I’m not opposed to eating them at cookouts or even have some at dinner, so here we are. I will note that we actually don’t follow the recipe exactly. We have adjusted the type of meats we use, but we follow other directions. Before starting the hamburger making process, place the meat grinder in the freezer for at least 30 minutes. This will cause the meat to not get stuck during the grinding process.

Here’s the recipe that we loosely follow, which was found on Good Food Stories:

• 1 pound chuck roast
• 1 pound brisket, boneless short rib, sirloin, or top round (preferably a combination of two of these cuts)
• 2 large garlic cloves
• 1 large shallot
• 1-2 jalapeño peppers, depending on your spice tolerance
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Publix only offered 3 pounds of chuck roast, so we tripled the recipe and meal that you’ll see in this post. We used 2 top round sirloins as well. This means we had 6 pounds of meat to grind up!

Here’s the inspiration and the directions that we followed:

Burgers | Basics with Babish

Price:

You’re probably wondering about the price and why it’s marked so low. Well, we went to the store to buy the ingredients and the total cost was around $40 for us to buy all of the ingredients. We could make 17 patties, so that rounds to $2.35, give or take with some minor details. The meat itself was the major cost, but for two people, we only cooked 5 of the 17 patties, then froze the remaining 12 in the freezer for another time. Either way, it sure beats paying for a $10 to $14 for a burger at a restaurant!

I took on the role of dicing. We used only 5 garlic cloves since one was huge. They were pretty fun to cut up — even though I was super slow at dicing everything up!

Stephen was behind me, in charge of cutting up all the meat. It was supposed to be spread out and put in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Our freezer is so tiny that it’s nearly impossible to have separate trays, so we’ve got a huge pile of meat! It worked well if you’re in the same position.

After the 20-30 minutes of the meat and grinder in the freezer, the fun part starts!

Stephen was on that grind!

It’s really interesting how the grinder works, and you definitely notice how different the meat looks when it’s grinded.

Next, we mix in the lovely veggies I cut.

Side note: After a pho incident, Stephen isn’t a huge fan of jalapeños. We went out for pho once and he put too many of them in his dish and the pepper cranked the heat up, which he had to sniffle his way through the rest of the meal. So, no more jalapeño seeds for him.

If you’re not a fan of spicy food, you can hollow out the seeds of the jalapeño and it’s not a spicy dish anymore, I promise!

Now, time to mix them all together!

Once it’s mixed well enough, Stephen shaped them all into nice, even patties. He probably doesn’t let me do this part since I’d make them all different sizes — completely unintentional, that is.

He did so well with shaping them because they fit perfectly on the buns! He also put ground pepper and MSG on the patties prior to frying them we just bought some and he wanted to use it instead of salt.

The Binging with Babish guy toasted his buns in a cast iron skillet. Even though it’s still the summer season, we gotta toast these buns! I’m terribly sorry, I tend to joke a lot.

I admit, I do like the small touch of butter and the crispness of the buns being toasted.

Frying was the tricky part since we didn’t know how long was an adequate amount of time. Probably should have kept them on each side for 7-10 minutes to cook thoroughly. We put the skillet lid on them so the patties wouldn’t dry out. We would’ve cooked these in the cast iron skillet as well, but we don’t have a lid for it, but a skillet works as well.

They were so fatty, but the flavor was well maintained.

Okay, it may not look like much in the picture, but they were so juicy and flavorful! The veggies mixed in really make a huge difference.

Taste: Definitely better than a restaurant or drive-thru hamburger. The veggies inside the burger just give them a wonderful boost of flavor!

Rating:

The first time we made hamburgers, we made them in a cast iron skillet. Stephen claims that our first try was a 5. This time around, we didn’t have the lid that we were able to use when cooking the meal, so this is why we had to use our other kitchenware. He was a tad bit disappointed on how this batch turned out, but maybe it’s due to how the patties were cooked or the lack of pickles and onions that are usually found on his burgers.

Heat level:

Of course, with the seeds, it would be a whole different story, no doubt.

This is only our second time making them. We were a little disappointed with the bun we used, but maybe that’s because the patties were overwhelmingly large for them, haha. Anyways, a time consuming meal to make, but it’s fun making it together! At least we’ve got plenty of leftovers too for later.

Update: About two months later, [October] we thawed out the patties and used better buns. Some of the patties had a bit of discoloration on certain parts of them, but they were safe to eat. We still don’t have a cast iron skillet lid, so we improvised and covered the skillet with aluminum foil while the patties cooked. They made such a difference! They were a little bit fattier after cooking, but they were definitely more flavorful when being cooked on the cast iron skillet.

I hope you love this recipe; it’s a lot of work, but it pays off in the end!