The hands down favorite burger at Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm is the garlic burger. Sure, we have burger patties and they’re super convenient and quite tasty. Given the choice our boys always choose Jody’s garlic burgers!
I’ll start with ingredients:
1lb ground beef
6 cloves of garlic (or 1 tablespoon minced garlic)
1 egg
10 Ritz-style crackers
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
salt
1 tablespoon of butter
1 medium onion (optional)
Now some instructions:
Completely defrost your ground beef. The best way to do this is to plan ahead and take your ground beef out of the deep freeze and put it in the refrigerator to defrost. 24 hours ahead of cooking is good. I put in a bowl or a zip lock bag so it won’t make a mess as it thaws. If you didn’t plan ahead take the ground beef out and put in a large bowl of warm water. This will speed up the defrost time to about 30 minutes. That’s okay you’ve got some other things to do.
I start by sauting a large onion. Heat pan on low/medium heat & add 1/2 tablespoon of butter. Slice onion into rings and add to melted butter in pan.
While your onion cooks, it’s time to make your Ritz-style cracker crumbs. (In the past, I’ve used Italian breadcrumbs or Panko. When I was out of both of these, I improvised with cracker crumbs. The resulting burgers were so good, I’ve updated my recipe.)
The rolling pin helps make nice, uniform crumbs.
Add paprika, white pepper, and black pepper to cracker crumbs and mix thoroughly.
Whisk one large egg and add to ground beef and garlic.
Add crumbs and spices and mix thoroughly.
Form into 4 equal sized patties.
Remove onions from skillet.
Put remaining butter in skillet and turn heat up to medium.
When butter is fully melted add the burgers and sprinkle a bit of salt on each.
I like to use a timer when I cook burgers. For medium rare I cook them for 5 minutes per side. Add a minute per side for medium. The oven timer helps me from leaving them too long before turning. If you’re making cheeseburgers, put the cheese on as soon as you turn them.
