I have given myself a project to create a blog and document my cooking adventures. For each adventure, a friend or family member provides me with one main ingredient. With the main ingredient, I will select a recipe and will cook a delicious dish.
For each entry, I will introduce the main ingredient, tell you about my inspiration for the selected recipe, cook the dish and provide you with my thoughts along the way. Hopefully, my story and my cooking skills will inspire you to cook too!
Cooking adventure number #1 – Mouth-watering beef burgers with onion rings
For my first main ingredient, my friend selected ‘beef’. My friend also had a second choice of a ‘rainbow trout’ but he decided to use one of his favourite food ‘beef’. I researched and selected three recipes including beef lasagne, eggplant beef meatballs or beef burgers with onion rings. All three recipes looked delicious and weren’t too difficult however, I chose beef burger with onion rings because it was a recipe I have not tried and the picture in the cookbook was MOUTH-WATERING! I also thought the burger was a healthy “alternative” to the burgers at the fast –food chain restaurants. The ingredients for the ‘mouth-watering beef burgers with onion rings’ are:
Lettuce
Mince Beef
Beetroot
Onion (chopped and ringed)
Garlic
Tomato
Self-Raising Flour
Flour
Cornflour
Bacon
Cheddar Cheese
Bi-Carbonated Soda
Olive Oil
Parsley
Beer
Tomato Chutney
It took me in total 1 hour and 30 mins to prepare all the ingredients. This included measuring, peeling, cutting and washing all ingredients into bowls and plates and the presentation for the photo. I was pleasantly surprised how long it took me to prepare all the ingredients and figured it was because it was my first time cooking for the blog.
This is a picture of me boiling beetroots. It almost looks like boiling red wine (HAHA) and when I was peeling the skin off the beetroots, each peel made a small circle so it looked a ruby.
I combine the beef mince, the fried onion and garlic, salt and pepper and parsley together to begin making the beef patties. There were some great smells and flavours from the mince as the garlic and onion had been lightly fried. I used a small drop of olive oil on my hands to begin making the patties to make sure it wasn’t going to be dry. Each patty I made was either too big or too small but the very last patty; out of 5 patties was perfect size.
I combined the self-raising flour, corn flour, bicarbonate soda, table salt and beer to make the beer batter. The beer that I used was Crown Lager (only because my Dad likes drinking that brand) but you can use any type of beer you like.
The recipe described the beer batter as looking similar to cream, however my beer batter at one stage looked like mud and was very gluggy. I soon realised it was because I didn’t include the corn flour! Once the corn flour was added, my beer batter looked like cream. I was so relieved! It was creamy, thick and had the beautiful aroma of beer.
I cooked the patties in olive oil and on a medium heat. It took 30 minutes to cook through the patties due to the thickness. Every 15 minutes I would check the patties by inserting a small knife to check the beef had cooked thoroughly. A few times, I had to put the patties back in the pan as it was still raw and pink inside and I didn’t want to serve uncooked burgers! The pictures make the patties look a bit burnt but they definitely didn’t taste like burnt patties.
The next step was the beer-batter onions. I lightly dipped the onion in the plain flour and then dipped the floured onion in the beer batter. However, the bowl I used for the plain flour was so small that by the time I finished my last onion, there was a mountain of flour on the table. Once I put the floured onion into the beer batter, it was so hard to find the onions because the bowl I used for the beer batter was so deep, they all sank to the bottom. A lesson I learnt was use the correct types of bowls!
Once the first onion had finished deep-frying, it was the exact same onion ring as the picture in the cookbook; big, golden and crunchy. This is the onion rings being fried in vegetable oil. My cousin took this great photo and there were many other great photos but this photo caught my eye.
I started plating up the burger, firstly with toasted bread buns, lettuce, tomato, beetroot beef patty, cheese, bacon and the burger bun.
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The burger was slightly lop-sided as it was a very big burger so I decided to put a skewer stick in to hold the burger together. The burger was DELICIOUS because the beef patty had the parsley, onion and garlic being combined with cheese, bacon, lettuce, beetroot and tomato. You get all this in one bite which fuses different flavours in your mouth. The beer-battered onion rings were AMAZING because it had that “crunch” that onion rings usually get from a fish & chips shop and you can taste the “beer” in the onion.
The burger was so big, it couldn’t fit in my mouth probably and it made my stomach feel very full after only eating half-way through the burger so I suggest drinking soft-drink (or beer,) with this dish.
Overall, the dish was TASTY and absolutely better and healthier than any burger at a fast –food chain restaurant. The onion rings were DIVINE on its own while hot but with tomato chutney, it was AMAZING. I would recommend this recipe to anyone. At the beginning of my first cooking adventure, I was very excited during the planning and shopping, but during the preparation and cooking, it was a bit stressful and I was running around the kitchen to do different thing such as frying patties, deep-frying onions, etc. However, once I plated the burger, I thought it was all worth the effort, because it looked fantastic and tasted great. My cousin who ate the other burger thought it was mouth-watering too.
After finishing my first cooking adventure, my sister and I calculated that we spent $32 on food and 3 hours on cooking. I’m really excited for the next cooking adventure and can’t wait for the next mysterious ingredient. Hopefully it won’t take as long cooking and it will be even better!
This recipe was taking from Gary Mehigan's cookbook Comfort Food
This recipe was taking from Gary Mehigan's cookbook Comfort Food
