hamburger in onion broth with corn

The hamburger is enhanced with the things that I like, things that will contribute flavor to water or to broth. A lot of good possibilities are shelved, for example beef broth would be good and so would tomato paste or tomato sauce or tomatoes. 

I used chicken broth because it is what I had on hand that was opened and needed to be used. 

* soy sauce

* Worcestershire sauce

* oatmeal processed in the coffee bean mill

* oregano

* chile flakes

* salt and pepper 

* mystery ingredient used by cooks since the beginning of time in one form or another in far flung cultures. Something you'd never think of, something horrible on its own, something that doesn't fit but something that in small amounts boosts flavor like nobody's business. The trick is to use very little.

All that stuff stuck onto the pan is an important element. This pan was chosen so that bits will stick to it. Lifted right off with liquid. 

The juice is not wasted for dinner and its gorgeous pattern is not wasted for ARTS!

If you took a hamburger bun and smashed it the mass would reduce to a tight little ball. My older brother would put sandwich bread in his back pocket for later and it flattened to  bread paper. The dude totally grossed me out all the time with the crap he would eat to sustain his scrawny self. Once he ate a stick of butter. And it wasn't even real butter. I get ill just recalling the scene. And I'm suddenly transported. An odd tiny house outside Tachikawa AFB, a tiny kitchen, he's raiding the refrigerator, we're about to set off. He's teaching me preparation for adventure. I try the butter thing and feel like I'm going to vomit. Well, that amount of oats, one smashed hamburger bun worth, is processed and spread throughout five hamburgers. And they're large hamburgers, they could have made seven or eight. The oats will  adjust the texture and help cohere, there is no egg as with meatloaf, the oats will absorb over twice their weight in liquid and keep the hamburgers moist with broth and with fat.

Look, we're being chemists up in here. Companies use chemicals to do this. 

Oatmeal is better for you than processed white flour. There would be five such buns for these hamburgers. The amount in oats of one hamburger bun is distributed through five large hamburgers. They would make good steaks for a nursing home.