11 West Gay Street

A few months back my brother-in-law began raving about a new burger joint that had opened out his way in West Chester.  I have a lot of faith in his recommendations for other things so I was definitely looking forward to checking out Buddy’s Burgers, Breasts and Fries (double entendre intended?) as soon as we could and on a recent Saturday I finally got my chance as our families met up for lunch.

I won’t be the first (or last) person to compare them to Five Guys, but I’ll say a comparison to them is only fair in menu configuration (little buddy = 1 patty, buddy = 2 patties) and in the offering of a myriad of toppings.  Anything further would be a slap in the face to Buddy’s as everything they do is superior to the ever growing chain – from the burgers to the fries.

Their toppings menu is slightly more extensive than at Five Guys and opened up the opportunity for me to concoct a slightly Mexican themed burger to satisfy my spicy tooth.  Pepper Jack cheese, avocados, jalapenos and caramelized onions worked perfectly on the more than generous griddle cooked single patty that I ordered.  Served up on an over-sized sesame seed specked bun, the meat-to-toppings-to-bun ratio was perfect without going overboard (I can’t imagine having the second patty would add too much besides bulk – on me).

The fresh cut fries are perfect, too.  A small is more than enough for two people but you probably won’t want to share them.  Huge flecks of salt set up camp on most of the fries giving you that great crunch when your teeth meet up with them.

One of the interesting features of Buddy’s is that it is actually two restaurants in one, though both have separate entrances.  The adjoining restaurant?  The Salad Stop.  You could see the tumbleweeds rolling down through the dining room while at the same time Buddy’s was bustling.  It is an interesting combo that forces a pretty serious gut check as a look to the left towards the salads reveals perhaps how we should be eating, while a look to the right towards the burgers reveals how we really want to eat.  My inner Michael Pollan was conflicted for about 2 seconds.

West Chester is off the beaten path for Philly folks, but Buddy’s is worth the drive out one weekend.  Two doors down is an Iron Hill outpost and a bunch of other top-notch watering holes line Gay Street.  Baldwin’s Book Barn isn’t too far away and provides hours of entertainment searching for a rare book or quiet nook to read, and perhaps providing enough time to build up your hunger again to head back for another burger or a quick stop at West Chester’s legendary hot dog stand Jimmy John’s.

Quick dinner from a few weeks back when a 1/2 day at work gave me the opportunity to hit up two different farmers markets for ingredients.  A Le Bus Whole Wheat Burger bun was the perfect foundation for our burger mix of natural, (primarily) grass-fed beef and chopped bacon ends (oddly shaped, wildly fatty slabs of deliciousness from the Lancaster County Farmers Market in Wayne, PA).  Add blue cheese, a fire-engine red tomato and some extra whole bacon ends on top and the urge to go out to a restaurant and spend $15 for a fancy burger is officially curbed.  When possible serve your burgers on plates with pictures of surgeons on them – its a karma thing and it fights off the bad cholesterol.

Not too much to offer by way of recipe on this one, more along the lines of advice…we find the beef available at farm stands tends towards the lean side, so chopping up bacon and adding it to the mix prior to forming your patties keeps the burgers moist (in addition to adding flavor).  We tested a new (and cheap) cast iron skillet from Ikea and were happy with the results.

Additional Resources:

Beef from Hillacres Pride

Bacon Ends from S. Clyde Weaver

Tomato from Good Harvest Farms

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.

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

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

To put it lightly, I am not a fan of Oprah and as such I had an immediate prejudice against this recipe when my lovely wife mentioned she was going to prepare some for me to grill for dinner the other night.  Not sure of the complete back story on this…apparently Oprah ate this burger at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort, begged for the recipe for herself and then shared it with her TV audience.

Recipe here via Oprah.com (ugh!)

The best part of this burger might be the use of the mango chutney.  Clearly not a common burger ingredient, it keeps the burger juicy (which is often an issue when cooking a turkey burger and relying on your mom’s advice about cooking turkey until it is done aka completely dried out) without imparting too much fruity flavor.  The apples and scallions are nice touches, too.

Additional notes: Finally got the BBQ up to a high enough temp to land some grill marks on the burgers – a geeky thing that fills me with pride…Potato rolls are the bacon of the baked goods industry, they just make everything taste better…Pull back on the salt a bit, you aren’t going to draw out any beefy flavor by loading up the sodium so you might use this as an opportunity to back off…Bought the corn at Root’s Market the other day, which is a completely chaotic Amish/Farmer’s market nowhere near where you or I live (which is a shame)…For those that know me personally, the addition of a mini-van to our driveway and now my reviewing a recipe promoted by Oprah means that yes, I have officially given up. The old Marc was a lot of fun – remember the good times and pour one out for me.

In this 32-page easy reader, Papa Bear and Brother Bear head off for fast food burgers at a restaurant curiously named “In And Out.”  Since the 1960’s, over 200 Berenstein titles have been published so it was inevitable that one would prominently feature burgers.

Interestingly, an AP obituary of Stan Berenstain included the passage

… the Berenstain Bears, written and illustrated by Stan and Jan Berenstain, helped children for 40 years cope with trips to the dentist, babysitters, eating junk food and cleaning their messy rooms.

so this title is either a rare moral slip up on the part of the authors or further proof that the hamburger has transcended junk food status and shifted into the “food of the Gods” category.

The (human) Berenstain’s were Philly folks through and through, so it is quite possible that the title is a mere coincidence and actually just a play on the fact that the story literally revolves around a door (note the title is “…Go In And Out” not “…Go To In And Out”).  Whatever the back story, the tale worked for our daughter who, when bumbling Papa Bear finally made it inside the restaurant and ordered two delicious looking burgers, uttered “wow, I’d really like one of those burgers.”

As much as I love iBurger (and the hilarious sounds my daughter makes while playing it) I haven’t found a truly useful burger app for the iPhone (note to self – get off high horse and invent truly useful burger app for iPhone). To the rescue comes a new app from foodie grocery chain Whole Foods featuring a full slate of burger recipes presented in a truly slick interface.

Over 25 burger recipes are featured ranging from the uber-healthy (beef and bulgur burgers) to the truly decadent (stuffed burgers with gorgonzola and smoky bacon).

Nutritional info is provided (and thankfully placed strategically so it is easy to ignore) as are diet keys which help point you to offerings that may/may not fit into your diet (you’ll be happy to know that Sliders are good for those who are “sugar conscious”).

One of the best features (though not burger specific) is called “On Hand” which allows you to type in up to 3 ingredients you have “on hand” and then suggests recipes in the library based on that.  Pretty handy to have when you are scraping the refrigerator bottom before shopping day.

We’ll be testing out the slider recipe soon and probably checking in on the app while out shopping to see what we can create.

Whole Foods annual “Buck A Burger” sale ends tomorrow (July 7th) I think.  We loaded up and cooked off some of their bacon and blue cheese burgers for lunch yesterday (tweet – Rounding out a weird weekend with some Bacon & Blue Cheese burgers from Whole Foods Buck A Burger sale. http://twitpic.com/9eezw10:41 AM Jul 5th from TweetDeck ) – pretty tasty.

ps:  If you are a budding iPhone app designer and are interested in helping create the burgatory iPhone app (and enjoy working for free) drop me a line…we actually do have a neat idea!

Sunday night is burger night around the house and this weekend’s version was inspired by a viewing of a PBS The American Experience episode about Buffalo Bill Cody, which when trying to cook and tweet at the same time somehow morphed into a reference to Dabney Coleman’s early 1980’s sitcom Buffalo Bill (see tweets here – heck, sign up to follow if you wish).

What made these burgers even more special was that the beef and bacon were procured from our local farmers market.  In most parts of the North East farmer’s market season has just kicked off and that is great news.  Within walking distance of our house are a bevy of delicious, seasonal options produced and sold by the person behind the till.  Stories, suggestions, recipes and heart are all within easy reach of the consumer and we are all a bit better for taking the time to slow down and interact on a more personal level with our food and those that grow it.  Of course these markets are famous for their veggies but we have found that many offer great quality meats as well.  Whether “farm-raised,” “grass-fed,” “organic” and/or “natural” meat, options abound and include not only beef from cows, but good quality bison and small-batch bacons.

Not so much a recipe on this one…more a parts list:

Bobby Flay calls his version a Cheyenne Burger.

Carl’s Jr.’s call it a Western Bacon Cheeseburger.

Dabney Coleman Fever movie on YouTube (kiss 8 1/2 minutes of your life goodbye before clicking)

More than a little hat tip to the gents over at BBQ Addicts whose invention, the “Bacon Explosion,” was the creative jumping off point for this monstrosity.

No shot of getting this thing in the New York Times, but my concerns (and those of our crew of culinarily curious friends) were in getting this in our bellies.  The idea just seemed like the logical next step and although it took about 3 hours start to finish, it is more than worthwhile trying it out at home for your next get together.  This one is guaranteed to stop people in their tracks.  As always, I will note that I am not a professional chef and though these directions worked for me, they may not work well for you.  This recipe is fairly forgiving so as long as you are certain to cook these beauties all the way through I can see little danger in making a minor misstep (and tons of upside in creating your own variations).

I actually made a Bacon Explosion alongside the Burger Explosion for comparison’s sake.  The recipe for the “Bacon Explosion” which is packed with pork sausage is best picked up at BBQ Addicts, though I will note that I tweaked that recipe a little, swapping out the bbq rub for a home spun mixture of salt, pepper and rosemary.  The rosemary worked out very well.

Burger Explosion (serves 8-10)

Step 1 – Fry up the 3 slices of regular bacon on a griddle as you would for morning breakfast, when done remove from griddle and pat dry (don’t worry about getting too much grease off, this ain’t health food!)

Step 2 – Take the butt end of the whole grain bread and sop up the rendered bacon fat from the griddle.

Step 3 – Place the bread into a food processor and whir it up for a few seconds to make breadcrumbs (yes, even the breadcrumbs are gonna taste like bacon!).

Step 4 – Put your ground beef, egg, oyster sauce and 3 tablespoons of the bacon-y breadcrumbs into a bowl and mix thoroughly by hand.

Step 5 – Make a 4×5 lattice pattern with the bacon (this may be the most fun part of the recipe)

Step 6 – Lay out the ground beef mixture over the entire bacon lattice.

Step 7 – Place the cheese slices on top and then crumble the cooked bacon over the cheese.

Step 8 – Roll the meat/cheese/crumbled bacon mixture up to the “top” of the lattice and form into a log.

Step 9 – Roll up the lattice and meat like you were making a sushi roll.  It is best to use the foil under the lattice to lift and crimp.  I thought this would be the hardest step and it wasn’t too bad.  Take your time though.  You want to make it nice and tight.

Step 10 – Take it to the grille (Bacon Explosion is in the back, Burger Explosion is in the front).  I used a gas grille and cooked it indirectly (gas wasn’t on underneath the explosion) at about 225 for 1.5 hours.  Then I turned the heat up to about 300 degrees for 20 minutes and started poking and prodding it like any good dad would do at a BBQ.  At this point, though it is hard to screw up, again just make sure you get the internal temp right*.

Step 11- The last 10 minutes or so I applied some basic supermarket BBQ sauce to the outside, trying to be careful not to burn it because of the high sugar content.

Pre-sauce…

After saucing…

Step 12 – Cut up and enjoy!

The Burger Explosion tastes like the best bacon cheeseburger you’ve ever had in your life.  No need for additional condiments, though no one would scoff if you tossed this on a bun and added some lettuce, tomato and onion.

Some notes:

1. This is surprisingly not overly salty.

2. Too much of this will probably kill you, but you will have a huge smile on your face.

3. The Bacon Explosion was great, too!  I think the Burger Explosion won the popularity contest, but narrowly because they were both really good.

Have fun with this, I know we did.  Let me know if you make it and how you tweaked the recipe.

Enjoy the rest of the holiday weekend!

Marc @ Burgatory

Post holiday weekend and we’ve got an impenetrable wall of leftovers in the fridge from Saturday’s Passover Seder and Sunday’s Easter dinner.  Tons of great food prepared by family and friends and lots of late night snacking and experimenting opportunities.

This burger was pretty much inevitable after the first bite of haroset at the Seder.  On the Seder Plate haroset represents the mortar which the slaves used to build the pyramids in Egypt.  The almost too simple recipe of chopped apples, nuts and wine is available everywhere on the web (see here, here and here) and is ideally prepared by your mother/grandmother.  The version we had was just on the happy side of “too sweet” and as used here was the perfect burger topping.

The burger itself was an 80/20 mix of ground chuck and was produced using “The Great Burger” recipe from John Torode’s new book “Beef and other bovine matters.”   The secret to Torode’s recipe (and how these burgers are served at his Smiths of Smithfield restaurant in London) is his use of Chinese oyster sauce instead of salt.  His theory that salt dries out the burger too much and that this side-effect outweighs the benefits of the taste it imparts is an interesting one and I have to say I kind of agree.  We grilled the burgers and I purposely left one patty on to the point of overdoneness and it was still juicy.  More side-by-side tests are necessary, but I’m willing to buy into the logic.  The oyster sauce doesn’t overpower the burger either.  In the end it was much more subtle then the sniff from the bottle might have suggested.

At this point I am not sick of matzo…that will come soon enough though.  Sadly, as anyone who has eaten a Hillel sandwich knows, matzo is not the best sandwich delivery vehicle, but even as it crumbled to bits with the first bite it remained the only logical choice for this burger and the rare bites that did include burger, haroset and matzo were perfect.

Our pantry will be filled with matzo for months (do they sell it in anything but 5 lb. boxes?) so this dish will pop up again in our house very soon…just have to make more haroset but that is easy and is a great use for any leftover wine you might have laying about.

By the way, the perfect beverage for this burger is of course Passover Coke.  The local Genuardi’s supply was waning considerably the other day…load up while you can!

Next up is an Easter burger with cabbage roll topping on a potato roll!  Stay tuned.

A strange confluence of events this evening as I was getting ready to do some maintenance on the blog.  I took a look down at the website hit counter and noticed that it had crossed the 9,000 mark en route to 10,000 (and maybe more).  I had kind of told myself that when we hit 10,000 I’d feel this experiment was a success.  It got me thinking about how this blog started and then a ping came from the mail program and my Google Alerts set for “burgers” showed a story (1,2) about Beef Burger in Greensboro, NC…which in actuality is how this whole blog started.

While late night websurfing a few years ago I came across a  website dedicated to a burger chain called “Biff Burger.”  This site stunned me in its simplicity and the depth of information it held on this burger chain from the history books and started me thinking how many other stories were out there.  Fast forward a bit and sites like A Hamburger Today and the site/book Hamburger America pretty much fill the niche for this type of info, but I thought there were probably a few stories that could be told and so I set up shop @ burgatory.com to tell them, toss out recipes, report burger news and generally learn how blogging works from the back-end.

Each summer we load up the family truckster and hit the open road searching for hole-in-the-wall burger joints and salt-air beaten clam shacks.  Last summer we pointed the car towards Greensboro, NC to visit “Beef Burger,” one of two remaining locations of the original “Biff Burger” chain.  I’ve been sitting on this post for ages due to lack of inspiration, but the fact that the pictured burger can be yours today and tomorrow for a mere $0.59 is reason to pull it out of the draft folder and send it live to offer my opinion.

Beef Burger

1040 W Lee St
Greensboro, NC 27403
(336) 272-7505

A while back I stumbled upon a website dedicated to a burger chain called “Biff Burger.” After years of driving past one of the last outposts of this chain on the way to college I searched for info in hopes of planning a trip and sadly found out that the restaurant had by then closed. And, with its closure, the Biff Burger chain was down to only two locations (one in St. Petersburg, FL still using the Biff Burger moniker and one in Greensboro, NC now called “Beef Burger.”) Having blown the opportunity to enjoy a burger at a location within reasonable driving distance from home I vowed to get to one of the two remaining restaurants when the opportunity presented itself…and thus the itinerary for this year’s burger vacation was set…we’d make our way to North Carolina.

Located in an industrial section of town, across the railroad tracks from UNC-Greensboro’s campus (and home of the ridiculously great hot dog and ice cream joint Yum Yum), Beef Burger still draws in the crowds.  Polite and orderly, folks line up inside the tiny lobby which no doubt was outdoors at some point (and thus much less claustrophobic) and feast on traditional American roadfood fare.

I ordered the SuperBurger combo with a Cheerwine (yet another reason why the South rocks -from a culinary standpoint) and settled into a formica booth to enjoy the fruits of the laborious drive (Philly to NC via Pittsburgh/West Virginia).  By sheer will alone that burger had to taste good, and it did.

As C. Catherman notes on his tribute site, Beef (ne Biff) Burger’s signature feature, the Roto-Broiler:

…was an ingenious specially designed broiler which gave Biff-Burger the leading edge over many other Drive-Ins during the day in which fast-food hamburgers were common. But the burgers at Biff-Burgers weren’t just your “ordinary” hamburger. The burgers at Biffs had a unique char-broiled taste which were unlike any other. Every original Biff-Burger sign, regardless of design used, indicated “Roto Broiled”. The “roto-broiled” process was indeed Biff-Burgers signature to fame and the reason why so many people enjoyed their burgers!

With the gift of hindsight I must honestly admit that the burger was nothing earth shattering.  It didn’t rise to the top of my own personal list of best tasting burgers, though the thrill of the chase more than made up for that.  The broiler certainly helped provide a unique flavor to the burgers and I can see why Mr. Catherman and hundreds of others are still partial to this cooking method.

The carousel of meat effect was pretty amusing and my daughter and I stared at it for a while before she made her way outside to the coin-op human version on the sidewalk (that is her in the corner of the pic).  The lower level of tis ingenious machine toasted the buns and that was a plus, too!  Brought together in a styrofoam container with a decent side of fries and the aforementioned sugar-shock inducing soda, this was burger escapism at its best.  A real retro experience worth searching out, even hundreds of miles away.

If you want to learn more about Biff Burger/Beef Burger, I implore you to check out C. Catherman’s site.  He truly has a love for the history of the chain, a keen eye for detail and a photographic memory about his experiences at the restaurant.

As we get closer to 10,000 hits (I know – not much for a real website, but heck…my mom would be proud if I took the time to explain to her what a blog was) I will dig out and repost some of the old stuff that I am particularly proud of and finally (I hope) finish a story I have been working on for a few months about the greatest hamburger icon of the 20th Century (seriously)!  Thanks.