Medium Rare

Mr. Gastro came home from work today with two white plastic Adirondack chairs and a flimsy little table, and I nearly fell over squealing with glee. We've been talking about getting some cheap patio furniture so we can eat out on our balcony ever since we moved into this apartment a year ago, but up until today the only thing taking up space on that patio was the dead remains of last years blight riddles tomatoes in a couple of rubbermaid tubs. (Must. Throw. Away.) Anyway, the arrival of the new patio furniture could not have been timed better.

I was making burgers.

We're on day three of Aquapocalypse here in Boston (Or as I've taken to calling it, Javapocalypse. Nobody is really dropping dead from dehydration around here, but everybody was pretty pissed off on this Monday morning that regardless of how many Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks exist in this city, there was nary a cup of coffee to be found. That's what I call priorities.) Saturday morning the weather felt like classic Springtime in Boston, that is, appropriately cool. But wouldn't you know that no sooner does that water main break than the temperature shoots up and the humidity along with it so it feels more like July or August than the early days of May in New England. Somehow these two events going hand in hand feels all too appropriate. After all, what good is a water crisis without some unseasonable heat to go along with it?

Anyway, the heat dropped this afternoon to just about Nirvana levels, like the most perfect Summer evening you've ever seen, and I decided we were going to celebrate our temporarily perfect weather and the arrival of our new patio furniture with some burgers and corn on the cob. I took a couple of tips from a repeat I recently saw of the No Reservations "Techniques" special, where Tony and Friends review all of the cooking basics any self respecting American home cook cannot go without, and made, I'm sorry, SOME REALLY AWESOME BURGERS.

Looking at tonight's Burgers in comparison to those I've made in the past on the grill, I will say now that a flat cooking surface is definitely preferable. On a grill all of the fat (read: flavor) is able to run off, giving you a leaner, but not nearly as tasty burger. On a flat top (Or in our case, the pancake griddle side of our reversible contact grill) all of that greasy, flavorful goodness has nowhere to go but right back up into the meat, and I can tell you without a doubt, that you can absolutely taste the difference. The other great tip that I stole from Tony was the real winner though, and I will never again make a burger without doing this one thing--brush both sides of the burger with melted butter before throwing it on the heat. I know, I know, it's like cooking with Caligula, the excess is almost too much to handle, but I am telling you--the butter crisps up and creates a beautifully browned exterior, while the inside gets sealed up with its own fat and juices, making, I swear to god, one of the most awesome burgers I've had in a really long time. Or to quote one of my mother's favorite phrases:

"I don't know whether to eat it or shove it down my pants."

A couple of other quick to tips I've found helpful when doing burgers at home:

*Let the meat come to room temperature before cooking it. It will cook much more quickly and much more evenly, and you will have better control all around.

*Fat is your friend. With burgers, you want to choose a ground beef with a higher fat content. It feels so wrong, but it tastes so right. 85% lean has always worked for me.

*Less is more. Don't do anything clever to your burgers. You don't need spices. You don't need bread crumbs. You don't need to stuff the burger with anything. Ground beef. Lots of salt, pepper, and butter on both sides. Done. Step away from the burger.

*Toast the buns. Drop them face down on the cooking surface around the same time you flip the burgers, preferably in a smear of burger juice. The bread will be warm, crispy, and just a little meaty. Mmmm. Meaty.

Now for the toppings: We forgot until about halfway through the cooking process that we hadn't picked up any cheese, but get this--we dropped some ripe avocado on top instead, and the result was cosmic. Creamy, fatty, all the things you love in a cheeseburger, but somehow, more awesome. A little red onion, some fresh tomato, and I ground up some chipotle peppers in my coffee grinder and mixed them with the ketchup to give it a smokey kick, to very nice effect. The final product is everything you want in a burger, but your civilized, PC brain tells you is wrong and evil. These burgers are big, and when you bite into them, you suddenly find that your hands (and face) are dripping with grease and butter and chipotle ketchup. You're a mess. A hot mess. And maybe on some other night you would feel self conscious about that, but tonight, the weather is perfect, the beer is cold, it's dark and maybe (just maybe) nobody can see that you're wearing your dinner, but you don't really care. You lick your fingers, sigh a fat, happy sigh, and lean back to nurse your beer and enjoy the rest of this balmy, greasy, gorgeous evening.