I'm back! Let's talk about burgers!

I am a devoted carnivore. For most of my life I’ve eaten nothing but animal products, and red meat and cheese are my favorite food groups. Only this year did I add broccoli to my diet. What I’m saying is, I don’t eat vegetables. Especially not onions, oh hell no. Hell. No. Onions are disgusting. They’re squishy and crunchy at the same time- almost slimey- and they have that weird flavor that's savory and strangely biting. It's like an assault on the taste buds. I get shivers just thinking about it.

Except… caramelized onions.

It turns out I like those.

This weekend my friends and I went into NYC, and we found this place called 1 2 3. They serve sliders for a dollar, shots for two, and beers for three. Being a bunch of poor college kids, we were pretty thrilled, but we were certainly not expecting the burgers to be any good. We were standing in the bar sipping our beers (I’ve recently discovered a beverage called “Shock Top,” which is a light beer with an orange flavor… lovely), and they brought our burgers out on one big platter and handed them to us. I was horrified to see that they were covered in caramelized onions, but I was standing in the middle of a crowded bar with the burger in one hand, my beer in the other, and no table in sight. I was starving. I had no choice but to eat it without picking the onions off. So I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and took a bite… and a chorus of angels started to sing. That burger was GOOD. I know I tend to be hyperbolic when talking about food, but I honestly can’t recall ever eating a more delicious burger. How could this be? How could I be consuming- not just a vegetable, but the most vile and horrible of all vegetables- and be enjoying myself? This couldn’t be possible.

I decided to conduct a test. Maybe it was just all the alcohol I consumed that made me think I liked the burgers. Maybe it was something about those specific onions that made them special. Ina had a recipe for burgers with caramelized onions in Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics that I set out to test. If I made my own onions, I could see if I really and truly did like caramelized onions. I also decided to make my own hamburgers rather than buying the frozen kind, and I'm glad I did. I got bison meat, because I’ve always loved buffalo burgers, and I was real happy with the results, and I invited Gavin over to help me make them, mostly because I didn’t want to touch the gross raw meat with my delicate lady hands. So I had him mix together the buffalo meat, about 1tbs of Dijon mustard, salt, and pepper. He formed them into patties and grilled them to perfection, and they finished just after the caramelized onions, which I couldn’t believe I was making.

You put 2tbs butter and 2tbs olive oil in a pan, apparently this cuts down on the smoke. Cut up an onion into half-rings, and put those on LOW HEAT for about 20 mins. I put them on medium heat and made a delicious batch of charcoal, and got really grumpy and upset and I’m surprised Gavin put up with me. I chucked those and started again on low heat, and after about 20 minutes they looked beautiful. I mean, for onions. Ina recommends you splash them with… I forget how much, but just splash them with sherry vinegar, or in my case white wine vinegar, and sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and cook ‘em for about 2 more minutes.

Everything was all ready. My Kaiser rolls were toasted, I put a little bit of spicey mayonnaise on them (at the Pioneer Woman’s recommendation, it’s just mayonnaise and Tabasco sauce), and I piled some blue cheese on my still cooking buffalo patty. I transferred that to the bun, covered it in the onions, and took the first bite. It was delicious! Oh my goodness!

I like onions!

This is truly a glorious day for me. All sorts of doors have opened up. Today I ate French onion soup and actually ate it, instead of just dipping in the bread so as to avoid consuming onions. Goodness me, hallelujah, I like onions!

I highly recommend you cook your own burgers sometime, it’s incredibly satisfying and you can freeze the patties and cook them again whenever. Fabulous. Gavin said he enjoyed the burgers but if he could do it again he'd leave the mustard out, but I thought it added a nice flavor to the meat. To each his own.