Crooked Kitchen

This is part of a series of posts I’m bringing back from my previous food blog. The topics might not be as focused, but I think they still deserve to be republished in a current forum. Enjoy this post from February 2007 about my experiment with grinding my own burgers.

Inspired by some talk of homemade burgers, and that I hadn’t had a good burger in a while, I decided to make my own burgers – including grinding my own meat. I reviewed the Good Eats episode on ground beef, and tried to recreate that burger. Instead of Alton Brown’s recommended mixture of half-chuck and half-sirloin, I went with all chuck, a two-pound package of it.

Continue reading to see how I formed the patties and how they turned out »

I’ve had meatballs in my freezer for a long time now, and never got around to using them. Today I decided it was time to use them for a quick lunch.

With canned plain tomato sauce on hand, making a tasty sauce to go with pasta, bread, or meatballs is really simple and fast. Today I chopped up the remains of an onion, and smashed and roughly chopped three garlic cloves, then sauteed those in some California Estate olive oil.

Once they started to get fragrant, I added a good amount of red pepper flakes, some pepper, and a bit of dried oregano. I let it continue to saute until the onions just started to brown, then I added one small can of plain tomato sauce, just enough water to rinse the sides of the can, and a glug of balsamic vinegar. I let that simmer uncovered for ten minutes.

After simmering, I tasted it, and decided it needed some sugar, a bit more vinegar, and more oregano. Once that was stirred in, I added the frozen meatballs and about 1/2 cup of water, and partially covered the pan to let the meatballs cook for 20 minutes.

When the meatballs were done, I removed the lid and raised the heat to thicken the sauce. In the meantime, I toasted some pieces of sourdough bread. It all finished at about the same time. I put the meatballs and sauce on one side of the plate, and the bread on the other. The whole meal required about 15 minutes of active work, including cleanup (nonstick pans, while not great for everything, make cleanup of simple meals very easy).