Oliver's prime hamburger, sprung potato





Sprung as in spring, but if I said spring then you'd think Spring so I saved you a fake out.


This is slice, slice, slice, turn the potato and slice between slices, and then I realized I have a machine that does this in one continuous spiral but it pulls out a potato plug from the center and when it comes to eating it turns out one long continuous potato spiral is not all that fun to eat. 

I thought it would be.


But it is not.


You do not mess with excellent hamburger. Colorado beef. Dry aged. 

Another one of those excellent things that comes by way of deprivation, by accident, by people being lazy or stupid or all of those things. Think of the most banal thing possible and that is how excellent things are discovered and how mankind advances. Then forgotten. This is why Tony's butchers with their Colorado prime beef and Wagyu and such cannot beat Oliver's.

Joe said, "It isn't rocket science."

?

"Those guys up in Montana didn't have freezers. They had to store all that meat someplace. They hung it up in the barn, and boom, aged beef."

Why Montana by way of example is not clear but his point supports my own so no argument here. 


Really not messed with. No sauce, no chile, no garlic, so not-messed-with that it is seared on one side only, the other side protected by sweet onion. The onion is fried on that side but the meat is not. 

Not even salt. Never salt on any steak while frying. This is contrary to what you might officially learn. Dry rubs on roasts with salt are okay, but not on steaks nor hamburgers. The reason is because salt pulls out moisture, salt on the surface pulls moisture to the surface where it is seared off. So don't do that. 

Then let it rest. A while. An uncomfortable while. I get it, you're hungry, but the steak or hamburger must rest. 

Why?

The meat fibers are denatured and wrung tight like a mop by high heat. Allowing the meat to relax means allowing the individual meat-fibers to relax and like a mop that relaxes it will then absorb back the juice it squeezed out and did not fry off because you wisely avoided adding salt to the surface until serving. 

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