Cheeseburgers vol. 1
First of all, I apologize in advance make no apologese for the amount of cheeseburger content that may present itself on this site.
I won't say that I necessarily plan on creating a dedicated cheeseburger series, but I'd like to keep the option open, so "vol. 1" it is.
This week's meals featured a lot of dishes from famous food blogs. A couple of which, I guess had recently gone viral. More on that shortly.
In most cases, I don't cook by following a strict recipe. Instead, I'll use recipes as inspiration, or make things up from experience. I like this because it provides a lot of freedom, and at this point, I'd like to think I know a thing or two about cooking.
The downside is that it can be tricky to replicate the particularly good meals in the future, and it's less than ideal when you try and start a food blog where sharing recipes plays a large role. So, I'm working on my documentation.
However, when I cook a dish from a well-known publication, I like to follow the recipe so that I can bitterly critique the final product.
I get a lot of flack for this, because "why do something how it's written when you know a better way to do it"-Anonymous. To which I say, absolutely nothing because that makes a lot of sense.
The first dish was delicious, and so simple that it really doesn't require a recipe: Hetty McKinnon's dumpling salad. Only for us, we substituted rice for the salad. A perfect example of me not following a recipe to make it better. Rice>Lettuce.
Next, was apparently the hottest recipe on TikTok, so you know it's got to be good... and honestly, it could have been. A simple pasta with roasted tomatoes and feta.
Unfortunately, I was unknowingly provided with a defective Pioneer Woman spin-off, which adds an entire block of cream cheese to the mix. A perfect example of me knowing better, but following the recipe anyway. Not a winner.
After that monstrosity was something I would definitely make again. Similar to the dumpling salad, this recipe was one of the Cup of Jo five-ingredient dinners and it was an arugula, peach, and burrata pizza.
I wouldn't say I've ever really crave a salad pizza, but for some reason, I've never been disappointed by one. And I gotta say, this one was a banger.
We had a couple decent things this week but the real star was no contest. Now, it's not really a fair competition (or a competition at all) because cheeseburgers are perhaps my favorite thing to eat.
I know, finally, the cheeseburger content.
I usually keep it pretty simple: beef, a lot of salt, cheese, tomato, onion, mayo, ketchup, on brioche or a potato bun. That's pretty standard for me 90% of the time. I did go pretty wild this week with sauteed onions.
Can I talk to you quickly about Martin's Potato Rolls? Have you heard of them and do you have a connection that can get them to me in Colorado without ordering an entire case?!
They are THE BEST cheeseburger bun (for my kind of burger). I've sourced them in restaurants, but cannot find them for the life of me on grocery store shelves.
Unfortunately, I didn't have those. Nonetheless, it was very good. We also had sweet potato fries, curry mayo, and a Sancerre Rouge. 10/10, and I didn't need no dang TikTak to tell me was good.
That wasn't so bad, right?
Well, it's just the beginning...