Tag Archives: red onion

Beefalafel Burger

I should say up front that I initially intended this recipe to involve lamb rather than beef, so feel free to swap out the protein. Shit, you can even go with ground turkey if you want. What the fuck do I care?

Anyway, the grocery store that’s on my way home from work didn’t have ground lamb, and I wasn’t about to break out the Kitchenaid stand mixer and grind up the lamb chops that they DID have for some $20+. Also, I didn’t feel like going to Whole Foods and waiting on a line filled with granola-eating vegans to procure said ground lamb (Whole Foods has everything – it really is awesome… just always crowded with food Nazis). All that said, I went with ground beef. About half a pound of ground chuck, to be exact. Under $3.

My idea for this came to me when I was trying to decide what I wanted for dinner. I was thinking or ordering a burger from a local steakhouse, but I was also craving falafel. So I decided to combine the two desires into one. Behold, the beefalafel burger:

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It’s a really simple recipe, with an incredibly delicious end-result.

What The Fuck Do You Need?

  • lemon juice
  • plain greek yogurt
  • a few cloves of garlic
  • olive oil (for sauce)
  • vegetable oil (for frying)
  • falafel mix
  • half pound of ground beef
  • potato buns
  • tomato
  • red onion
  • arugula
  • feta cheese
  • various normal, everyday household cabinet spices

*Note* as I mentioned above, feel free to swap the ground beef out for something else. Also, you can play with the ratios. If you add more meat, you will have a beefier final result that leans more toward the burger side than the falafel side. This recipe ratio – with a half pound of beef to one packet of falafel – yields four burger patties that are somewhat more falafel-ish than burger-ish. However, they are WAY more juicy than your typical no-beef falafel.

How The Fuck Do You Make It?

First, I’m going to pop my time-lapse cooking demo into the post here, that way you can see for yourself how the steps unfold. It’s really fucking easy.

So now that you’ve seen it made, here’s the step-by-step:

STEP 1: Make The Sauce
Cut up a few cloves of garlic. Sautee the garlic in a pan with olive oil and lemon juice until they get softened and the mixture starts to get slightly brown. Allow this to cool. Place a few tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt into a small dipping bowl and add some spices to your taste. I like cracked black pepper, oregano and crushed red pepper. Once cooled, add your garlic, olive oil and lemon juice combo into the yogurt from your pan. Mix thoroughly and set aside for later.

STEP 2: Make The Falafel
Prepare your falafel according to the instructions on the packet. If you’re industrious, feel free to make your own falafel from scratch. I go with the packets because they are easy as fuck, and they taste perfectly delicious to me. Besides, all that’s really involved here is adding a cup of water to the falafel powder and then mixing the shit into a fucking paste.

STEP 3: Add The Ground Beef
Mix your half pound of ground beef into the falafel paste and get the meat particles evenly distributed throughout the falafel.

STEP 4: Make The Burger Patties
Form four equi-sized burger patties on some wax paper. Step four is fucking one line of text. Don’t fuck it up.

STEP 5: Fry The Burgers In Vegetable Oil
Add your vegetable oil (1 & 3/4 cups, thereabout) into a frying pan and crank the heat. Once it’s hot enough for frying, place your burgers into the pan. When the patties turn to a dark brown color on the bottom, it’s time to flip (maybe 5 minutes). When both sides are done, take them out of the oil and place them on a drying rack or a bed of paper towels.

STEP 6: Assemble The Burgers
While you’re waiting for the oil to get hot, you can slice your tomato, red onion, and feta cheese, and rinse your arugula. When you’re ready to go, smear some of your yogurt sauce onto each half of the bun. Be generous, too. This shit is actually pretty healthy. Add your burger, onions, cheese crumbles, tomato and arugula. Close that bitch up and eat! I like to slice mine in half for easy mouth-shoving.

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As you can see, this leans a bit more on the falafel side than the burger side. Add more meat and you’ll see some pink in there for a nice medium.

Parting Thoughts

This is a great way to stretch your supply if you’ve only got a small amount of ground beef left from an earlier meal. It’s also a smart way to cut down on the fat and red meat if you’re dieting, without sacrificing flavor. Lastly, it is really budget-friendly. For about $15 you can feed four people. Not bad! And you can make a salad with the rest of your arugula, tomato, feta and onion, if the burger itself doesn’t fill you up. Just make some extra yogurt sauce to use as a salad dressing.

Cured and Smoked Salmon

Let me take a few moments to explain why I love this shit so much: Salmon that has been fucked with in some way (whether smoked or cured) is one of the few fish items that has an almost meaty persona. When you start sucking down slices of that beautifully bright colored shit, you almost feel like you’re eating raw beef. The texture of it, the chilled temperature, the addition of some capers, onion or a little olive oil… it’s difficult not to see the similarity to something like beef carpaccio. Just imagine this picture being a red color instead of pinkish-orange:

salmon

One thing I’ve come across in my chowing of this delicious stuff is that it is called by many names. Lox, cold-smoked salmon, Gravlax, etc… and then there is almost invariably a location element, which is sometimes just a way to add descriptive and fresh sounding words to a menu item: Nova Scotia, Scottish, Wild Alaskan, etc. What does it all mean? Check out the essentials below:

Lox: In the days of old, this was strictly sourced from salmon belly only, though now other parts of the fish are used. It is either brined or salt-cured, usually for a few weeks, but it is not smoked or cooked in any way. This would be the purist’s pick.

Gravlax: This shit is the Scandinavian version of lox. Dill, peppers, sugar, juniper berries, horseradish and even liquors like brandy or aquavit are used while curing to accent the flavor. It is not smoked, and it is often pressed while it cures, to eliminate moisture.

Nova Lox: This lox is cold-smoked after brining/curing, and, as the name obviously suggests, it hails from Nova Scotia. That being said, the words “Nova Lox” are increasingly being used to specify the curing process as opposed to being a strict geographical marker. Fuck that. Words have meaning, people. Let’s not get too crazy.

Cold-Smoked Salmon: Essentially it is Nova Lox that comes from a place other than Nova Scotia. Any part of the fish can be used (not just the belly), and “cold” is somewhat of a misnomer, as the temperature is typically about 80 degrees while it is exposed to smoke

Hot-Smoked Salmon: This is essentially BBQ’d salmon. The salmon gets completely cooked through. Like poached or grilled salmon would, the meat will flake apart. It has a smoky flavor but a more firm, dry texture.

So now you’re armed with the lingo, and you’re no longer a Nova Lox Novice: You’re a cold-smoked pro, and you know what to expect from your salmon. Which do you prefer?

What do I like? Pretty much all of it except for hot-smoked. I generally don’t like my salmon to be cooked, unless it’s on crispy skin. My ideal preparation would have all the spices and flavors from the Scandanavian Gravlax preparation, but it would also be cold-smoked to add a little more manliness. Fuck yeah… and with some capers, red onions and a little bit of olive oil or truffle oil on top…