While we wait for me to figure out how to post the pictures of food and other things to my blog I thought I better start writing some posts before it becomes too overwhelming to catch up. That's usually when I just give up. I can cite several projects that have recently been ignored because I'm too far behind, but since this is about Animal Style Burgers I should stick to the subject.
I'm not a burger fanatic. I could even live the rest of my life without a burger and still be happy. This, from the girl who got engaged at The Training Table, a fancy burger joint. (I still love their special fry sauce and lemonade!) All of this doesn't mean I don't like burgers. I do! But, sometimes it's the mood and sometimes it's the burger. For these In-n-Out knockoffs there is a decent amount of work and they didn't taste like In-n-Out. They were dang good though! I got the recipe from foodnetwork.com. They have a good sized knockoff menu, so there are several things I want to try. Because there is already a perfectly good recipe, I won't rewrite it. The tweaks for Lizzie are obvious- no mayo, Lizzie cheese, etc. There are, however, tweaks that I would use, and some that are out of my hands.
The first is the meat. The recipe recommends a 60/40% ratio of fat in the meat. I'm not sure my butcher carries anything like that, and even if he did that is a lot of fat! I went with an 80/20% and the burgers still shrunk nicely.
Next is the special sauce. The food network people either have not looked into this or they don't print it because they know it will be unpopular with the general population. The special sauce consists of ketchup, sweet relish, vinegar, and mayo. This comes very close to the actual sauce in a way that mixing ketchup and mayonnaise can "become" fry sauce or Russian Dressing. The flavor is similar, but slightly off, and the color is the same, so that's good enough, especially when the actual ingredient goes against every rule their taste buds have given them. The secret to good sauce is NOT mayo. It's Miracle Whip.
Noooooooo!!!!!!! I can hear some of you screaming now. But trust me on this. Do your own experiments. Buy the smallest bottle of Miracle Whip available, Salad Dressing if you buy the store brand, (I wouldn't, just for accuracies sake) and then pick up a burger, asking for extra sauce on the side. If you have Fry Sauce in your grocery store you can pull it into the debate. I haven't tasted it, so you'll need your own taste buds to work overtime if you are so inclined. Mix up two types of sauce, one using mayo (1/4 cup), ketchup (2 Tbls), sweet pickle relish (1 Tbls) and a white vinegar (1/2 tsp), with the other simply substituting Miracle Whip (1/4 cup) instead of the mayo.
Remember, this is only to verify my claim that the original fry sauce from Arctic Circle and the special sauce in these burgers uses M.W. Do your taste test. You can still like and enjoy the blander version, but unless you know the truth you won't have the option to prepare this correctly.
Next, the size of that thing! The picture shows an overwhelming double-double, dripping with flavor and grease. We each used only one patty and some of us still couldn't finish! Talk about a mouthful!
I'm going to need to find a nice hickory smoked b-b-que sauce soon. All this talk about burgers has made me crave stuff, and that fry sauce that The Training Table had was made from hickory b-b-que sauce and ......... Miracle Whip!
