Suffolk Spice Company Austrian Stubaital burgers
This recipe is inspired by a visit to Austria some years ago and brings back memories of mountains, waterfalls, umpah bands and family time in a local village café.
The notion of stack them high works here as when we had something similar to this it was served on a generous bun with cheese, sliced pickles, rashers of bacon, sliced onions, salad, more bacon, more cheese, mustard sauce and was all toped off with a fried egg. The tower was held in place with a bamboo skewer and served with chips and salad. The boys thought they were in heaven. We went more than once!
The key to this recipe is prep and patience.
The onions and garlic are chopped and softened in butter and oil. Do not allow them to go beyond the translucent yellow stage, burn is not the order of the day here.
Once the onions are cooked, let them cool. If you add hot onions to cold mince it will cause the fat to melt prematurely and you will get slimy burgers, not good.
While the onions cool, spread the meat out in a large bowl and sprinkle over the spices. Massage the meat around to combine the mixture and leave to infuse.
Once the onions are cooled, put ½ of the meat mixture into a food processor fitted with the spinning knife blade. Then add the now cold onions and garlic. Blitz until the meat and onion mix are combined. The result will look something a bit like pate. You may need to stop and scrap the sides around a bit to ensure the everything gets pulled together. You are trying to avoid lumps of onion. When you are happy, put the blitzed meat mixture back into the large bowl with the rest of the mince. Combine well with a wooden spoon or your hands and set aside to rest while you organise your self for the main event.
These burgers cook surprisingly quickly so get all your other accompaniments ready to receive. When we do it, its like a production line with buns ready to go, cut and sauced, cheese grated (it melts from the heat of the burger), pickles and onions thinly sliced, salad (I insist, much to the boys consternation) and crispy rashers of bacon done and kept warm between to sheets of kitchen towel. You can add the fried egg also if you wish, it is worth the effort but not essential.
Now to make the burgers themselves we are going to need two sheets of grease proof paper or baking parchment and a rolling pin. We are going to make very thin patties of meat. They cook quickly and work well with everything else.
So, take a ball of mince mixture about 5 cm across, roughly satsuma sized. Put it between the sheets of grease proof paper and flatten it out but hand to start with the using the rolling pin. You are looking for something that will end up the size of a saucer or 5 to 6 mm thick.
Heat you frying pan medium to hot and add a splash of cooking oil. Remove the top sheet of paper from you burger and then place the meat face down in the pan and peel off the second ‘backing’ sheet, there is a bit of an art to this and you may need a spatula or such like to help you. Cook for 4 -5 minutes on each side until they are cooked as you like them. As I say, they cook quickly because they are thin. Build you burger stack to your own specifications. Because the burgers are thin you can even go for the double stack! Twin burgers.
At this point I will just mention that of course you can make your burger patties as thick or thin, small or as wide as you like, the choice is yours. As with all these kinds of instructions, they more like guidelines.
Also, if you think you are not going to be able cook and all the mixture in one sitting, it will freeze. In addition, this mixture makes great meatballs!
Ingredients for the burgers (makes 6 -8)
400g lean beef mince
400g of good quality pork mince
1 tablespoon of SSC Stubaital mix.
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 fat cloves of garlic finely chopped.
Oil for frying.
Buns and accompaniments to your own tastes.