I worked in a burger restaurant located in a shopping centre food court when I was fifteen.  It was called Donny’s Diner and was kitted out like a 50’s American diner, complete with red faux leather booths and a jukebox at every table.  It had character.  Fake character for sure, but character none the less.  The food however was garbage.  I can say that unequivocally as it was me who cooked it.   I started out waiting tables, graduated to fries and buns and then, following the ‘chef’ (the owner’s grumpy brother) storming out in the middle of a busy Saturday shift, I got my hands on the grill……by which I mean big flat hot plate.

I flipped thousands of burgers that summer.  We did all the standard burger fare in addition to ‘glamorous’ burgers covered with chilli, Dianne sauce, peppercorn sauce.  I was also responsible for making these sauces, which I did without the first clue as to what was involved.  I shudder to think what we served up.

What has this got to do with the Grand Burger Showdown?  I’m glad you asked.  I suspect that the latest burger under the microscope was cooked by the same method I used to use at Donny’s Diner.  All the burgers at Donny’s were half cooked first thing in the morning, refrigerated and then finished off on the hot plate as the orders came in.  We got through several hundred burgers a day and this was seen as the most efficient way to manage the checks.  Now I don’t know for sure but I’d place a fairly sizable bet that my Pulse burger went through the same process. 

Pulse is a tiny little hole in the wall on Kent Street that has a huge turnover every lunch time.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen the place without a queue out into the street.  And the food is great!  They have a full burger range and some fantastic salads.  The Moroccan Salmon salad is one of my very favourite lunch time dishes and the organic chicken burger is huge and very tasty. 

For the burger challenge I picked one of the weekly specials – the Jalapeño Burger.  It clocked in at a hefty $11 and stacked up like this:

• Wholemeal bun
• The fairly small organic beef burger
• Jalapeños – and they had a kick!
• Caramelised onions
• Swiss cheese
• Gherkins
• Capsicum salsa
• Lettuce, tomato and aioli

First the good news:

The complete package is damn tasty.  The jalapenos have a real kick and the onions and capsicum salsa give it a great sweet and sour edge.   As I’ve said before I love wholemeal buns with burgers and this one is no exception.  The heat built as I ate but was never overwhelming.  All in all it would have been better without the actual burger.

The bad news was the burger itself.  For a start it was pretty small.  The taste wasn’t unpleasant as such but the burger was as dry as Oscar Wilde’s wit.  The texture was mealy and, when I took a bite, it didn’t come apart like a burger ought to.  It wasn’t good and it came with a texture and appearance I’m all too familiar with.  The burger did arrive in about six or seven minutes and I suppose that’s part of the price for fast food.  I’d just rather be given the option to wait a bit longer.

The overall flavour was miles better than the Big Mac, but then it should be at three times the price and the flavour was more to do with the accoutrements than the burger. 

It’s a damn shame because Pulse has always been better than this in the past.  If you’re in the neighbourhood then it’s well worth a visit to grab a s alad or a chicken burger, just maybe steer clear of the burgers during busy lunch periods.

Four down, one to go.

       

Click here to download:

The_Burger_Challange_-_Round_F.zip (4007 KB)

If I’m being totally honest; this is the one I was looking forward too.  I was determined to still judge it on its merits, but how could a foodie not be excited by the prospect of a 600 day grain fed Wagyu beef burger?

Wagyu is not something you see much of in the UK, well, not outside London anyway.  I’ve been reliably informed that it’s starting to creep onto menus here and there, but it’s at UK prices plus a premium.  When I first arrived in Sydney I was stunned to find that you can buy it pretty much anywhere.  It’s available in every butcher I’ve been to and it features on at least eighty percent of the menus I get my hands on.

First time I tried it was at the Japanese place just up the road (another thing that is wonderful about Sydney is the sheer number of good Japanese restaurants.  Edinburgh has two).  I was expecting some tasty beef but not prepared for the taste sensation that ensued.

Wagyu is special.  Not special in that ‘foodie’ ‘oh it’s tastes of rainbows and honeysuckle pixies’ way, but really properly special.  It has a higher percentage of monounsaturated fats than normal beef and yet it manages to taste like it’s been dipped in butter.  It’s rich, velvety and smooth.

But does it make a good burger?

Yep.  Damn skippy it does.

It was a sunny afternoon so we, me and five hungry colleagues, phoned in an order for six Wagyu burgers.  Happily Plan B is just over the road and right next to a nice little garden, which is a bit of a rarity in the city centre.  It’s a perfect place for lunch on a sunny day.  The burgers are a bargain at $10 a pop. 

Twenty minutes after picking up the phone we went and collected our burgers and headed for a spot in the sun.

The burgers aren’t huge.  That’s a good thing.  They are a decent size and the burger is almost round, like a mini cricket ball.  It comes on a toasted brioche with a thin slice of cheddar, some lettuce, pickled beetroot, caramelised onions and a dollop of mayonnaise. 

The full recipe can be found here – make your own Wagyu Burgers.

The wagyu has great depth of flavour.  One of my colleagues, Tom, mentioned it had a bit of a clove flavour to it, which I agree with, but they are nowhere in the recipe.   The beetroot is quite subtle and the onion is sweet and adds a little sharp twang. The bun works really well, providing a bit of sweetness and yet it’s lighter than a normal bun and doesn’t overwhelm the wagyu.  Nothing could overwhelm the wagyu.  As I bite into it the fat runs down my chin.  I can’t help but grin.  It’s rich, filling and spicy. 

Even a strong black coffee back at the office doesn’t quite cut through the fat coating my mouth.

I asked the guys to rate the burgers out of ten taking only flavour into account as much as possible.

Dom – 9/10 – needs to be bigger! 

Tom 1 – 7/10 – Not bad, better than the last one.  Tastes a bit ‘clovey’ and could do with being bigger.

Simon – 7/10 – Tasty but not as good as the burgers at Silks.

Matt – 8/10 – Liked the sweet buns, but I suspect he just wanted to say ‘sweet buns’ a lot.  Wanted a sausage roll when we were done.  Fat git.

Tom 2 – 7/10 – Bun a bit soggy but otherwise not bad.  Could be bigger.

And what did I think?  Well it was better than the Big Mac!  Big surprise, eh? It really was though.  Admittedly it’s twice the price but it’s also easily  an<script type="> ced/langs/en.js?1254614361" type="text/javascript"> twice the burger.  It looks nice for one thing.  The ingredients are quality, which means they are starting from a position of strength straight away, but I think the real difference is that a bit of effort has been put into it.  The Big Mac was relatively inoffensive fuel; it’ll keep you alive....probably.  The wagyu burger was to be savoured (although not at the speed Dom ate his!).

Sorry if it’s a bit predictable but that’s the way it goes sometimes.  The wagyu burger is going to be tough to beat.

       

Click here to download:

The_Grand_Burger_Challange_-_R.zip (2015 KB)

Ok, so there is definitely a bit of a food snob in me.

It wasn’t an especially auspicious start though!  I was genuinely feeling a bit odd as I walked down towards the McDonalds near my flat.  This is a place I pass every morning and the smell of frying oil hits you like a shovel when you get within twenty metres.  This is not a smell I find especially pleasant, especially at 7.30am.  Regardless I soldier on, I’m not here for the smell; I’m here for the taste.

And so apparently are the pigeons.  It was like a Daphne du Maurier short story.  One member of staff was standing legs together, feet out in a v-shape, desperately trying to stop a very determined pigeon from running into the kitchen.  This bird just kept right there at his feet, darting back and forward trying to find a way through.  The guy was sweeping at it with his feet, strongly encouraging it back into the quad area, but the bird was having none of it.  Eventually it slipped past him and darted under one of the units.  They laughed.  I cried.

I asked for a Big Mac and a medium fries (the fries I recall being the main reason for actually going to McDonalds), and handed over $6.35.  So there is no denying that this is a cheap lunch, however this is Sydney, a city that excels in providing a good lunch for relatively little money.  For 35 cents less I could have bought three large sushi rolls with tempura prawns.  This would have to be a pretty good burger and fries to represent real value for money.

Carrying that McDonalds up the road I felt as if I was clutching a bag with ‘Big Frank’s Quality Second Hand Sex Aids’ emblazoned across the side (no offence Frank, it’s a fine shop you have).  That is food snobbery my friends. 

As Weepix sat on the couch looking at me with utter disgust I opened up the bag and retrieved my lunch. 

They say the first bite is with the eye.  Good job that’s not true because this burger looked like shit.  I know it’s a cliché, but if they could make them even vaguely resemble the photo on the sign that would help.  This looks like crap.

I’m not here for appearances though.  Snails look pretty grim and I love them. 

So here goes.  My first McDonalds burger in about 20 years…….

And it’s not that bad.  The first taste is the overwhelming flavour provided by the ‘special sauce’, it drowns everything else out.  Then you get pickle and burger bun.  The bun is almost as sweet as a brioche and kind of collapses into mush in your mouth.  Honestly I don’t really get much beef taste at all on the first bite.  Second bite is more of the same but I must have got more of the patties as there is a slight beefy flavour in there too.

As a bit of an experiment I break off a bit of bun with ‘special sauce’ on it and cover it with pickle.  When I eat this it’s almost exactly the same taste as the whole burger.  It would seem that the beef is almost superfluous when it comes to Big Macs.

The one thing I really struggle with is the ‘cheese’.  This stuff is absolutely revolting.  It tastes like warm dairylee.  I know that’s what I should have expected but I can’t handle it.  This is not cheese.

Just as an aside, the fries are also a surprise.  I remember them as crunchy golden sticks of salty goodness, and instead they are pale, limp sticks of salty crapness.  The only two things they have going for them are they are hot and salty.  So is salt on toast.  I’m very disappointed with the fries.

So the burger wasn’t that bad.  The ‘cheese’ was repellent and the beef wasn’t really present, but it didn’t taste revolting.  It wasn’t particularly great either and I am sitting here with a dull stomach ache about 20 minute minutes after my last bite.  I can also still taste and feel the grease from the chips in my mouth despite several glasses of water. 

The thing that really struck me is that it’s not really about food; it’s about acceptable fuel.  Buying it didn’t feel like ordering something to eat, it just felt like making a transaction.  One of the most seductive parts of dining out is the expectation having ordered and there was none here.  Obviously I didn’t expect there to be, this is a different type of dining experience, but it did make me wonder ‘what’s the point’.

What I eat is really important to me as it brings me enormous pleasure.  I’m planning lunch at breakfast and dinner at lunch.  I don’t view it as something to get over and done with as quickly as possible so I can get back to the ‘important stuff’.  Eating is the important stuff.

To be fair to McDonalds that is exactly how they advertise their food and I’ve probably been a bit unfair to them.  I struggle with the idea that people don’t care about what they eat.  I think most people find that with things they particularly care about.  I have judged people eating in McDonalds in the past as ‘food morons’ with not a single collective taste bud between them, when in fact they probably just don’t consider it to be that big a deal.  Fair enough say I.

So it was a cathartic experience all in all.  The Big Mac wasn’t very good all in all but the only thing that actually tasted bad was the cheese.  The rest of it was just a bit synthetic and the surprisingly un-beefy.  I won’t be picking up another one anytime soon but I also won’t be judging those that do……

…..not much anyway ;)

             

Click here to download:

The_Grand_Burger_Challange_-_R.zip (3216 KB)

*Trumpet fanfare*

That’s right folks; Round 1 of The Grand Burger Challenge is complete.

The first contender for the crown is my own homemade beef burger.  I decided to go with my own first as I was in a burgery kind of mood, had all the stuff sitting there ready to go and I love making them.  I like the tactile side of it, all the chopping and mixing and then shaping.  It’s fun.  The quality of the end result usually rises proportionally to how much effort you put into it and you can bung in pretty much whatever you fancy and see how it goes.

Obviously this time it was deadly serious though so I stuck with the following; 

The Burger Mix:

• Roughly 500g beef mince from the local butcher
• Onion – finely chopped
• Parsley – coarsely chopped
• Between ¼ and ½ a teaspoon of ground cumin and coriander
• A generous pinch of chilli flakes
• A couple of pinches of salt
• A few twists of black pepper

I quite often put a teaspoon of mustard and chopped gherkin into the mix, but I left it out this time.

No great shakes or tricks here, it’s just a case of getting the lot in a bowl, mixing it by hand and squashing it into patties about an inch think and the size of a coaster.

I fired up the barbecue (gas grill really) and left it to heat up to about 275°C, which is pretty much as hot as it gets, the idea being to try and sear the outside of the patty as quickly as possible to keep the inside all juicy.  The temperature drops pretty fast when you lift the lid so you gotta be quick!

While the barbecue/grill was heating up I prepped the buns.  Now I can see you shaking your head at the fact that I chose to use brown wholemeal buns and not traditional burger buns.  I like both, but I find the wholemeal buns add a nice malty flavour and really soak up the juice from the burgers, so I tend to prefer them. 

The bun base was spread with mayo and a few layers of lettuce (crunchy and floppy stuff) and some gherkins sliced length ways were added.  The top of the bun got a generous squirt of ketchup.

As soon as the barbecue was hot enough the burgers and some sliced onions went on the grill, the lid was shut and the fantastic smells started to build up.  I must have left them for about 3-4 minutes each side as they were pretty thick.  The smell really was incredible; a thick meaty aroma spiced with cumin and roasted onion. 

The smell is neither here nor there if the burger is useless though, right?  So how did they turn out?

First the good; I managed to get the seasoning really well balanced, better than I ever have before.  The cumin wasn’t overpowering and brought a real depth of flavour to the meat, and there was a very slight build of chilli as we ate.  The pickles were nice and tart and the onions sweet, sticky and slightly burnt.  The buns were indeed malty and held together well.  The burnt bits on the outside of the burger were glorious.

Unfortunately the burgers were slightly over done.  They were very slightly pink in the middle but I usually like my burgers medium and they definitely lost some of their juiciness.  It’s a damn shame, but these things happen.  The parsley didn’t really add much with all those other flavours around but it does look nice.

So overall it was a good burger experience but it didn’t change my life or anything.  I was secretly hoping for burger juice dripping off my chin and a ‘perfect hamburger’ moment, but it was not meant to be.

Not sure if it’ll be enough to win but it’s set a reasonably high bench mark.

         

Click here to download:

The_Grand_Burger_Challange_-_R.zip (2468 KB)

I’m a bit of a food snob.  Some folk would tell you I’m a lot of a food snob, but I don’t think that’s true.  I do try to avoid overly processed foods and I prefer organic chickens to mass produced supermarket ones, but I also love baked potatoes with cheddar and baked beans…..as long as it’s good cheddar of course, and I’m medically addicted to peanut butter.

The one thing I am snobby about however is fast food.  I haven’t had a Burger King (or Hungry Jacks as it is here in Oz), McDonalds, Pizza Hut, KFC or Subway for years.  I think I had a Subway once at uni when I’d had an ale or two but I’ve not had a McDonalds for at least ten or twelve years (and more like twenty years for a McDonalds burger).  I’ve never had a kebab and never plan to.

My aversion to fast food originally stemmed from concern over the quality of the meat that is involved.  I don’t insist on organic meat, but I do get a bit funny when I’m not quite sure about the quality.  For me it’s a no brainer that what you eat should probably be treated with a bit of care and respect before you eat it, especially when you’re planning to at an animal.  I’m not suggesting that all beef cattle be treated like original Kobe Beef, but I think we should be aiming slightly higher than the high density feed lot.

When I roast a chicken I like it too have huge legs and wings worth talking about.  For Christmas three years ago I roasted a 5kg chicken.  It was absolutely incredible.  When we ate it juice ran out over our chins and it had a much stronger taste than I’m used to.  It also made fantastic stock.  When was the last time you saw a 5kg chicken in the supermarket?  Never, that’s when.  Most mass produced broiler chickens are slaughtered at six to eight weeks old and a roaster might make it to thirteen.  During that time they stand in a shed.  If some die they aren’t necessarily removed and build up of faeces can result in ammonia burn on the skin (look for the dark marks).  They are also routinely fed antibiotics and often contain arsenic from antimicrobial drugs.  Nice.

While that is reason enough to be a bit wary about the origins of some fast food, I also don’t eat fast food because it tastes disgusting.

Or does it?

If I haven’t had a McDonald’s burger for twenty years am I really in a position to tell people that they taste disgusting?  I can’t remember exactly when I decided that they were unpleasant tasting, but I’m pretty sure that as a nine or ten year old, when I reckon I ate my last one, I loved it.  Is it just my food snobbery and prejudice that’s making me shun McDonalds due to taste?

I say we find out.  I propose a Burger Off……maybe not the best name actually.  Let’s go with Grand Burger Showdown instead.  Over the next few weeks I’m going to document my eating experience with five different burgers.  I’m going to be as open minded as I possibly can be and try to write an honest appraisal of each one.

The burgers I propose to eat, in no particular order, are as follows:

• A McDonalds Big Mac;
• A Hungry Jacks Whopper;
• A 600-day grain fed wagyu beef burger from Plan B (Becasse);
• An organic beef burger from Pulse Organic; and
• A homemade beef burger

I’ll posts notes and photos from each ‘event’ and provide all the relevant information regarding cost, nutritional info etc.  

It’ll probably take me a good few weeks to get through this lot as I can’t really see me managing more than a burger a week, but I promise to be as objective and impartial as possible.

I’ll post any further rules and regulations as I think them up.  Suggestions are certainly welcome!

Let the feasting commence.