Bacon Cheeseburger on a bun. A really good bun.

I had this post all planned for tonight.   It was going to be a really great one that went into the history of my special burger recipe.  It brought back certain memories of the Philippines from my last trip there when I was twelve, but alas.  Jon shot that blog post in the foot and it can go no further! 

When Jon and I were eating our burgers tonight I was talking to him about this blog post and he stopped burger in hand and looked at me in all seriousness and said, "Wait, you're going to give away your burger recipe?"  It was like I planned on selling trade secrets to a multi-million dollar company.  Maybe Jon thinks we'll start a burger franchise someday.  I don't know, but seeing his face go pale like that when talking about burgers made me think twice about divulging all the secrets to my special burger recipe. 

I will tell you this.  Tonight's burger was perhaps the best burger I've ever made.  Other secrets.....It has beef in it (surprise we're not Taco Bell!  Ha ha!)  and it has onions chopped and mixed in with the organic grass fed beef.  Of the rest of the contents I can tell you no more.  But the last tip I will give is for you to fry your burger in the bacon grease after you've fried the bacon.  Oh my gosh.  It was fantastic!  Did I just gross some of you out?   Ha ha ha ha!!!

I've learned a few things about oils this year.  Let me share my wisdom.

1.  Extra Virgin Olive Oil is not for cooking!!  You're not supposed to heat it up.  It's for dipping and mixing in stuff and drizzling over salads, but not for throwing in a hot pan.  I don't know why Rachel Ray always uses it for sauteing.

2.  Apparently bacon grease is good for you!  Huh.  Who knew?!

3.  Coconut oil is really good for you.

4.  Sunflower oil has a crazy high smoke point (460 degrees farenheit) which makes it really great for high heat cooking.  Oh and that's good for you too.

So anyways, don't be afraid of the bacon grease.  Just....don't go overboard.  Know what I mean?

 So those are a few tips to making burger heaven.  Oh and slap some cheese and bacon on that burger too. 

But if you really want to get crazy, make your own buns.  Yeah, I do that.  I know, I'm nuts.

It's just so hard to find organic wheat buns without soybean oil.  Or just any buns without high fructose corn syrup and soybean oil.  So, I make my own.  Thanks to my handy dandy bread machine, the most involved step of the process is forming dough into balls! 

Here's the recipe from allrecipes.com  Burger or Hot Dog Buns

I modified it slightly by using 1 1/2 cups wheat flour and 3 cups all purpose and I used the breadmaker instead of doing it by hand.  I just threw it all in and set it on dough cycle, then shaped the buns, let them rise again for 30 minutes and baked them as stated in the recipe.  They're really good.  Very fluffy, but substantial enough to stand up to a thick burger and lots of ketchup, mustard etc. 

As you can see, I made a few (strangely shaped and somewhat large) hot dog buns as well.  Ha ha!  Oops, didn't think they'd rise that much.  Oh well. 

Someday, I might give up the burger recipe.  You might just have to come over to try it. 

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Dear God, thank you for bacon.  Not only did Mikey eat bacon tonight, but he demanded it.  Thank you for bread, Clare devoured hers.  Thank you for giving us food and please help us be generous with everything that we have so that others in the world might have enough to eat as well.  Amen.