Cilantro Burgers

Like I promised yesterday, I'm sharing a burger recipe. This burger goes amazingly well with yesterday's cajun fries but it's great by itself too. As usual, I'm incorporating potato buns into my burger meat because I don't know how to NOT use them. They just make the burger taste so much better.

This post is actually kind of bleh because I didn't take many photos of the process because I wasn't really planning on turning this into a full blow blog post, but the burgers came out so yummy, I decided to share.

Ingredients [makes 4 burgers]:

½ lb ground beef (I used 90-10)

1 + 4 potato buns (or the bread of your choice)

2 cloves minced garlic

1 tablespoon chopped cilantro

1 egg

1 teaspoon dijon mustard

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon butter

Start by mixing the ground beef with one potato bun (ripped up into little pieces), garlic, cilantro, egg, dijon mustard, black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and crushed red pepper flakes. Use your hands to gently incorporate the ingredients but don't squeeze the meat and don't overmix, unless you enjoy tough burgers. The dijon mustard will help suppress any gamey smell/flavor in the ground beef and the Worcestershire sauce will add salt without actually adding salt. I find that adding salt to the beef makes the burger really tight and tough and not juicy. (I apologize for the grainy quality of the next two photos - they look as terrible as a flip phone camera! - I was messing with the aperture on my camera and 'lo and behold, these monstrosities are what I discovered when I later uploaded the photos to my computer).

Form the meat mixture into patties.

Melt a little butter in a skillet (I used cast iron because it holds heat well and cooks burgers really nicely) and then cook the patties. I cook them for 3 to 4 minutes on each side until they get some nice color and are almost cooked through all the way - just slightly pink in the center.

Toast the potato buns, or don't, and serve the burgers hot. I love the way the cilantro subtly flavors the burger; it's so good.

For bonus points, serve the burgers with a side of french fries (cajun or plain, your choice).

Here's the recipe page: