Just Say NO To Pink Slime!

As discussed a good few times, we’re advocates of homemade whenever possible. Nowhere is that good fight more needed than with The Burger.

If you’ve ever had amazing, memorable, Holy Crud burgers, I’ll guarantee you a couple things:
1. They ground their own meat, and
2. They either made their own buns or got ’em from a very local bakery.

having those bases covered, your frankly hard pressed not to make a great burger. So without further ado…

For the burgers, we’ll go 50%-50% pork and lean beef; pork for the extra.. well, fat, and beef for the main flavor notes. You can do anything you like with this mix, and your basics need not be fancy. I but the 2 or 3 for 1 stuff at Albertsons a lot an they make a perfectly decent base for a great burger.

Season as you please. I put in fresh oregano, garlic, smoked salt, smoked paprika and good black pepper

I used the bigger grinder plate for the KitchenAid, which does a fine job.

Now for the buns: I’ve worked hard to pare this down to a reasonable volume; most of what I’ve seen out there makes 12 to 16 buns per batch, which is kinda a lot. We wanted to be able to do maybe 6, so that they’ll get eaten up in a day or two, with no waste. Here’s what we came up with

Burger or Dog Buns
1/2 Cup Milk
1/4 Cup Water
2 Tablespoons Butter
2 – 2 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour
1 heaping teaspoon active dry Yeast
1 Tablespoon granulated Sugar
3/4 teaspoon Salt
1 Egg

Heat the milk, water and butter to roughly 100 F. Fill your primary mixing bowl with water as warm as you can get outta your faucet and let it sit until warmed through.

Mix 1 cup of flour, the yeast, sugar and salt together thoroughly.

Put the wet mix into the drained mixer bowl; add the dry mix and mix by hand. Crack the egg and reserve a teaspoon of egg white. Mix the rest of the egg into the blend.

Add remaining flour 1/4 cup at a time, mixing until the dough pulls away from the mixer bowl, leaving it more or less clean.

Continue to knead for about 5 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic.

NOTE: You can do this entirely in your mixer if you prefer; just use the dough hook and mix/knead on low speed.

For hamburgers, form 6 equal balls, place on a greased baking sheet and flatten into roughly 3″ discs.
For hot dog buns, form six rectangles about 3″ x 5″, then roll them up tightly along the long axis and fold the ends in on themselves. Place on a greased baking sheet, seams down.

Allow to rise for about half an hour. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix egg white with a 1/4 teaspoon of cold water. Brush buns with egg white mixture and bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove and allow to cool before cutting.

We did ours inside in a pan, so as not to waste any of those incredible flavors – Any questions?