At my inlaws last week, they had on some cooking show, and the guy was making burgers with half pork and half ground beef. I think he also sauteed some onions in some chili powder or cayenne or something, and added that to the meat before forming it into patties.
I was intrigued by the half-pork business, so in preparation for a cookout tomorrow, I bought 1.5 pounds ground beef and 1 lb ground pork. But now I can’t find that recipe anywhere.
I can fake it, of course; I make decent hamburgers anyway. But does anyone have any advice for making burgers like this? It just occurred to me that I probably don’t want to cook them medium-rare, as I usually do. Bonus points for anyone that can find that specific recipe!
You’re pretty much good to go as is. There’s no big secret about it except make sure you have at least 15-20% fat content total (in other words, don’t use a mix of something like ground sirloin and ground loin). This is a good rule in general for hamburgers, but especially so for these, since you will probably want to cook them beyond medium rare.
While I generally am straight-beef when it comes to burgers, from time to time I like to mix it up, and, when I’m feeling so, I find that ground lamb in the mix makes for a very tasty burger. You can go 50-50 lamb-beef, 50-25-25 lamb-beef-pork/beef-lamb-pork, or 33-33-33 lamb-beef-pork. In that case, you’ll be making something called pljeskavica, a traditional Serbian/Yugoslavian grilled meat patty.
When I make a meat loaf, I use two pounds of ground beef and one pound of ground pork. I’ve never tried, but a courageous experimenter might try taking their standard meatloaf recipe and cooking it up in individual patties. If I were to attempt it, I’d use less or no milk and maybe about half the breadcrumbs, so I didn’t have so much moisture to cook off.
My husband recently made burgers that were 1/3 ground beef, 1/3 ground pork and 1/3 Spanish chorizo chopped into small bits with a food processor. Highly recommended.
Every summer when we make the trek up to my in-laws camp, we have to have some bacon burgers which the local butcher prepares by grinding some slab bacon along with the ground beef. Yummmm!
There is a restaurant I always use as an upmarket date option that has this on their lunch menu. So I take interview candidates there if I get the choice… It is a heavenly combination.