Home-Ground Hamburgers

This will be a relatively short post, for a couple of reasons. First, it's less of a recipe and more of a quick "look what I made." Second, I'm really behind in my posts, but I've been cooking, so I have a good 3-4 posts I want to get written before I completely forget how I made them. 

Awhile ago we got a meat grinder attachment for the KitchenAid mixer as a wedding present, and while it was one of my favorite gifts, we just hadn't gotten around to using it yet, as much as I wanted to. So finally I got inspired by the techniques episode of No Reservations (the show in general, but this episode in particular, is an absolute MUST-SEE for anyone with any interest in cooking - and it's on Netflix Instant) where BLT Steak chef Laurent Tourondel shows us how he does his burgers - hand ground, of course, and fried in butter (my personal preference). 

We used 1 lb. of rather lean chuck, cut into pieces small enough to easily fit through the grinder.

The grinding part was easy - I definitely expected it to be more complicated, or not come out quite right, but it worked really well.

Next we formed them into patties, 

salt and pepper (right before cooking)

and then we grilled them (John won that argument :P). On hard rolls, with lettuce, tomato and mayo. A really good burger, I believe, needs very few toppings.

It was definitely a great burger, but I wouldn't say it was the best I've had. The meat was too lean to really give it the level of flavor I was looking for, and sirloin would probably have given it an even richer taste. Also as I mentioned, I prefer burgers fried on a griddle instead of grilled on an open flame. The carbon that gets burned onto the burger when grilling gives it a different flavor than the pure, buttery savoriness of a fried burger. 

Anyway, a really fun experiment that I will certainly be doing again soon, albeit with a few minor adjustments. Live and learn!