This is why I needed a good roll!

I left you all hanging yesterday as to what I used those Kaiser rolls for. Well now you know. But let me back up and talk about burgers.

In my very humble opinion, a really good burger comes down to a few very simple things. You don’t need to mix in tons of spices and sauces and stuff. This is what’s really important:

Nick’s Keys To a Good Burger No Matter What

- Use good meat. It’s pretty hard to examine meat quality once it has been ground so this usually means grinding it yourself or asking the butcher to grind something that you select. This is not hard and takes seconds yet 99% of people don’t do it.
- Fat. I’m sorry, but a good burger needs fat. At least 20%, but probably 25%. Deal with it.
- A good bun. You know that fat? It’s gonna need a place to go. You want something that will hold up to the burger.
- High heat. A good burger has a seared crust.

Do those things and you can’t go wrong. Notice I didn’t say anything about doneness, cheese, toppings, or anything else. In my opinion those can all be fixed to taste.

Don’t Get me Wrong. Will I eat a burger that is missing one of my four keys of a good burger? Probably. But I seriously doubt it will be a Good burger unless it has those things.

So let’s make a good burger. This is an adaptation of Mr. Bittman’s Burger.

The Pork Burger

Yield: 10 burgers.

Prep Time: 1 hour

Total Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2.5 pounds boneless pork shoulder, grind it yourself or ask your friendly butcher
3-4 garlic cloves
1.5 Tablespoons fennel seeds
Salt and Pepper

Orange and Fennel Chutney:
1 fennel bulb, chopped
2 oranges, peeled and chopped
1/3 Cup sugar
1/2 Cup water
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
Pinch of salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
A good food processor will help. If you don't have one, you can get your butcher to grind the meat.

Directions:

1) To make the chutney, pulse the fennel bulb and orange segments in a food processor until they are finely chopped. If you don't have a processor you can just chop them finely.

2) Combine the fennel and orange with the other chutney ingredients and simmer for about 45 minutes until the mixture is thick.

3) Once it's done, set it aside to top your burgers with later!

4) To make the burgers, chop your pork butt into a few large pieces and then pulse in a food processor with fennel seeds and garlic. Also, if there are any large pieces of fat on the pork shoulder, cut them off and process them before the rest of the meat so it's finer and more integrated into the meat.

5) Once your meat is chopped (you can also get your butcher to grind the meat), form about 4 ounce patties and put a large thumb impression in the center of each burger. Season well with salt and pepper.

6) Grill the burgers on a hot grill or in a hot cast iron skillet for 4-5 minutes per side until cooked through.

7) Grill or toast the buns and serve each burger with a good amount of chutney.

Making the Chutney

When Bittman made this, he just ground the fennel straight into the meat. That’s fine if you want to do that, but I like it better as a topping. It’s really the only topping this burger needs and it doesn’t even need it to be honest. It would be a great burger with nothing on it.

Good flavors people.

But if you wanted to make a topping for this burger, this is about as easy as it gets. It’s very flavorful, has some heat and sweet to it, and makes the pork flavor really pop.

To start, just chop up the fennel bulb and segment up the oranges. Then pulse everything in your favorite food processor.

This is gonna hurt!

Now if you don’t have a food processor you could definitely just chop this up until it’s pretty finely chopped.

Then add the fennel and orange to a saucepan with the other ingredients and bring it to a simmer. Let it simmer, stirring occasionally for about 45 minutes to an hour.

Easy and delicious.

As it slowly cooks, the orange and fennel will break down. The sugar will thicken the sauce slightly and it’ll end up being a perfect topping for your burger!

The only topping we'll need.

Making the Burgers

I try to keep burgers simple, but I like to start with good stuff. That makes your job really easy. If you start with excellent meat, then you only need to add things that accent the meat. If you start with crappy meat, you have to figure out a way to flavor it.

I used a really nice cut of pork shoulder for these burgers. The great thing about pork shoulder is that even the best pork shoulder you can buy will only set you back a few bucks. Nobody really likes this cut of meat for some reason which is amazing to me because you can make these burgers… or carnitas.

I shouldn’t be telling you all this because now the cost of pork shoulder will go up!

Fat is your friend. Trust me.

Once you get your shoulder, you can definitely just have your butcher grind it for you. If you have a food processor though, you can do it yourself which will have the added affect of making you feel awesome.

There’s really only two things to know about grinding your own meat (using a food processor instead of a meat grinder). First, make sure to cube your meat into inch or so cubes. That’ll make it easier. Second, if you have any very large pieces of fat on your shoulder you should process those separately. You’ll want to process them longer than the meat so the fat isn’t stringy at all.

Then you can just mix everything in a bowl with the chopped garlic and fennel seeds. You don’t need to add a bunch of stuff to these.

No need to make this complicated.

I like to go with about a 4 ounce burger. So if you start with 2.5 pounds of pork shoulder that should work out to about 10 burgers. If you wanted to be exact you could definitely weigh them with a kitchen scale, but that’s kind of unnecessary. Just eyeball it.

Once you get your burgers formed, salt and pepper them pretty liberally.

Salt and pepper liberally.

Cooking the Burgers

Now these burgers are awesome on a hot grill. They could also be cooked in a hot cast iron skillet. The key here is cook them in or on something hot. Medium heat doesn’t exist for these. You want to sear them and brown them nicely.

These guys will sizzle.

As they cook, the fat will melt and flavor the burgers. Whether you’re cooking on a grill or in cast iron, they’ll probably need about 4-5 minutes per side. Don’t fiddle with them too much. Let them get some nice grill marks.

And don’t worry, there’s so much fat in these guys that it’s pretty hard to overcook them. They’ll be juicy as long as you don’t leave them on the grill overnight or something.

And it should go without saying that you’ll want to toast your rolls.

Watch out for flare-ups!

The rest of this should be self-explanatory. Put the burger on the bun. Slather it with the chutney. Eat it.

BITE!

I’ll be completely honest. I didn’t even need the chutney. The burger was perfectly juicy and the bun was crunchy and chewy and awesome.

I don’t like to toot my own horn, but I’m tooting my own horn.

In my opinion, these were maybe the best burgers I’ve made.

I abandoned microwave popcorn years ago and have never really looked back. Popcorn is dirt cheap and once you know how to correctly make it on the stove you can experiment with all kinds of interesting toppings. I’ve made two other varieties of popcorn before on Macheesmo, the caramel variety in that post is especially delicious.

One of the things I’ve been trying out more recently is using whole spices and mixing my own spice mixtures. A few weeks ago I worked out a pretty solid Five Spice powder and turns out you can put it on popcorn!

Not shabby!

There are a lot of different varieties of five spice powder, but most involve something with some heat, something with an anise flavor, cinnamon, and in most cases clove. It’s normally put on cuts of meat like duck and chicken, but I figured it might work great on popcorn.

The nice thing about this spice powder is that it is pretty flexible. If you like more heat, add more peppercorns. If you don’t like anise so much, substitute the fennel seeds or star anise with something like ground ginger or maybe coriander.

Below is the mix I made and I thought it was a good start, but if you try this, taste it and adjust to your liking.

Five Spice Popcorn

Yield: A big bowl of popcorn

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

Five Spice Powder:
1 part ground cloves (1/2 Teaspoon)
2 part Cassia or cinnamon (1 Teaspoon)
6 parts fennel seed (1 Tablespoon)
6 parts star anise (about 8.)
12 parts Szechuan peppercorn (2 Tablespoons)

Helpful Equipment:
Spice Grinder (Nothing fancy, but this one gets the job done.)

Directions:

1) Lightly toast spices for a few minutes over medium heat.

2) Grind up in spice grinder.

3) Get a medium to large saucepan. It needs a tight fitting lid.

4) Sprinkle some popcorn kernels in the bottom of the pan until they cover the bottom in a single layer. If you do any more than that, they most likely won’t all pop.

5) Pour in vegetable or canola oil until the oil just covers the kernels.

6) Put the lid on tight and put it over medium-high heat. In a few minutes the kernels should start popping! Once they do, hold the lid on the pot with one hand and gentle shake the pan with the other hand.

7) After about a minute or two, the kernels should all (or mostly) be popped!

8) Pour the popcorn into a bowl and sprinkle some salt and five spice powder on it right away while it’s still hot.

I tried to use all whole spices for this powder. If you are interested in trying this out but can’t find some of these, I highly recommend Penzeys Spices. They sell quality stuff. Also, if you live in a metropolitan area, you can probably find most of these at an Asian market.

Smells good!

I used a good amount of peppercorns cause I wanted some heat to the powder. I think I may actually up it even more if I were to make this again. I think the ratios I listed above are a good starting point though. Adjust according to your tastes as I said.

For the whole spices, I decided to lightly toast them to bring out some of the flavors even more. The peppercorns definitely benefited from the toasting. I’m actually not sure that I would toast the others if I was making it again. I don’t know that it added much and you run the risk of burning them.

Toasting these guys is a good idea.

If you do toast them up, just keep a close eye on them. They will only need a few minutes over medium heat.

Then buzz them up in your spice grinder! You should end up with a pretty fine powder. It’s okay to have some difference in sizes though. It gives it some texture.

Be careful with the fumes!

Oh and don’t forget the fifth ingredient! I used this Vietnamese stuff because I have a mild spice addiction. It definitely is more intense than the normal cinnamon, but I think you could use the normal stuff and be just fine.

Go light with this stuff.

Making the popcorn

Making popcorn on the stove is super easy. Once you try it once you’ll never go back. It honestly takes about the same time as microwave popcorn. Ok. Maybe it takes like five minutes total, but it’s SO much better.

Get a medium to large saucepan. I’ve made popcorn in a bunch of different pots over the years and the only really important thing is that it has a tight fitting lid.

Sprinkle some popcorn kernels in the bottom of the pan until they cover the bottom in a single layer. If you do any more than that, they most likely won’t all pop.

Then pour in vegetable or canola oil until the oil just covers the kernels. For this version I tried adding a little butter also, but I think just oil works best.

Just covered is the key. I poured some of this out.

Put the lid on tight and put it over medium-high heat. In a few minutes the kernels should start popping! Once they do, hold the lid on the pot with one hand and gentle shake the pan with the other hand. The goal is to keep the kernels moving so they don’t burn while also keeping the pan on the heat. After about a minute or two, the kernels should all (or mostly) be popped!

Pour the popcorn into a bowl and sprinkle some salt and five spice powder on it right away while it’s still hot.

Adjust the spice and salt to your tastes, but that’s pretty much it!

Popcorn is one of my favorite snacks.

This isn’t exactly how five spice powder is intended to be used, but I found it to be pretty good. If I were to make it again, I think I would increase the peppercorn and maybe add some coriander or something to give it a bit more complexity. I think the real key is to go light on the cinnamon. It can very quickly overpower the spice mix.

You can store any leftover spice mix in an airtight container.

Has anyone else made this before or have any other spices suggestions? Leave a comment!

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