Home Cookin’: The Chinese Takeout Burger Topped With Sriracha Ketchup

As the days get shorter and the air a bit crisper up here in PA, the odds of foregoing preparing a home cooked dinner and ordering Chinese takeout instead have increased.  This quick recipe came about the day after a recent takeout night and we resurrected it this evening for dinner with some friends.  It is a dead simple recipe which produces a quirky take on familiar fare and, when combined with Sriracha Ketchup, makes for a darn good burger.

The taste?  Take everything you love about bacon on a burger and then sugar that up about 200%. By itself, honey boneless spareribs may be the most addictive item on any Chinese menu (and easily account for 2/3 of my repenting on Yom Kippur)  and as served here (chopped up and mingled with high quality beef) it follows along the lines of the trend led by so many “name chefs” adding different cuts of meats into their burgers (not just on them).  The spicy ketchup cuts down the sweetness a bit and provides a tease of heat to take this burger to the next level.

Recipe:

Rough #’s here, but any combination of these ingredients will produce more than passable results.

1 lb. ground beef (we used “all-natural” Hillacres Pride beef purchased at our local farmer’s market)

1/4 lb honey boneless spareribs  from Pak Yue (which is a fun name to say but always sounds confrontational when they answer the phone)

2 tablespoons of Oyster Sauce

Dice the pork into very small slivers then combine all ingredients in a bowl, mix lightly but well and then form patties (we made slider sized burgers).  As mentioned earlier on this blog, and ripped from the pages of John Torode’s book “Beef and other bovine matters,” when using the oyster sauce you can omit salt from the recipe.  The oyster sauce provides you with the tang you are looking for and keeps the burgers incredibly moist.

Siracha-Ketchup

3 parts ketchup

1 part Sriracha

As shown cooked on the gas grille and served on Martin’s Whole Wheat Potato Rolls.

Filed under: Burger, Burger Geek, Burger Recipe, Chinese Takeout, Family, Grass-Fed, Hamburger, Healthy, Marc Sanders, Martin's Potato Rolls, Meat in Meat, Organic, Recipe, Recipes, Sliders, Weird Burgers