The Slow Laura Burger

Friday evening and the eternal question- what to have for dinner? After a busy, busy week I was certainly not in the mood for anything boring or blaaaaaah. I wanted flavour, sensations, craziness!

These amazing burgers are a version of the Slow Larry as cooked by The Rivestaurant.

Constraints on my time and availablity of some of the ingredients at short notice meant that the following recipe is an approximation of the culinary genius you can watch at the link above. 

The original recipe calls for a mixture of beef and pork mince, but unfortunately I could only get beef. I've made gorgeous meatballs with a mixture of beef and pork several times, so I'd imagine the burgers would be awesome. But these turned out pretty darned tasty nonetheless. Next time though, I will certainly be trying it his way.

Recipe for the Slow Larry, done my way: The Slow Laura. 

Makes 4 giant burgers.

Ingredients 

800g Minced Beef

250g Streaky Bacon

1/2 Block of Cheddar cheese, grated

1/2 a white onion, finely diced

1 Medium Egg

1 Tablespoon Paprika

1 Tablespoon Barbeque sauce - I used the Jack Daniels Smokey sauce

1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder

Salt & Black Pepper

Jalapeño Slices- I used these Discovery ones 

Method

1. Fry off the streaky bacon in a little bit of oil. I use steamed coconut oil from Biona, which is odourless and flavourless. Once lightly cooked, take off the heat and finely chop.

2. In a bowl, combine the minced beef, bacon, diced onion, egg, paprika, barbeque sauce and garlic powder. Add a good pinch of salt and pepper. Mix these ingredients well, using your hands if you don't mind that.

3. Now for the cheese filling. Put the grated cheese in a bowl.

4. The jalapeño bit: The Rivestaurant roasted their jalapeño before mashing it, but in Tesco at 7:30 Friday night there wasn't a fresh jalapeño to be found. 

I had a jar of Discovery jalapeño slices at home, so in a pinch these would have to do. De-seed and mash about two tablespoons worth of flesh and add these to the cheese. Though this tasted great, next time I'm going to try to roast it.

5. Mix the cheese and jalapeño well, don't be afraid to sqeeze it and get it all mushed up. Just don't then touch your eyes without washing first.

6. Next I took the full bowl of minced beef, and divided the mixture into half, then half again so I had four equal-sized balls of meat.

7. On a clean work surface or cutting board, slap down one of the balls of meat. Press down on it and even it out so it's in a very large circular patty. Make the patty double the size you would make a burger.

8. In the centre of the patty place a small handful of the cheese and jalapeño mixture. It might be a good idea to divide the cheese mixture into four pieces before you begin stuffing burgers, so you end up with an even spread.

9. Carefully curl up the edges of the patty around the cheese mixture, covering it completely. Make sure there are no gaps for the cheese to seep out of. You can see exactly how The Rivestaurant do it here.

10. Once all your burgers are formed, place under the grill for about 15 minutes in total. I turned them once during cooking and they didn't break open but be fairly careful with them.

11. Serve! 

The Rivestaurant have a couple more recipes for sides to go with this dish, but at that time on a Friday I wasn't getting into all that. We had ours with a giant pile of mixed greens and a couple of sauces I knocked together.

12. Bonus Step: Dips

To make your dips, put three tablespoons of mayonnaise in three bowls. 

Into one I added a teaspoon of French's mustard, into another I added a teaspoon of Encona West Indian Hot Sauce, and into the third I added Mexican tinga paste, which contains chipotle chilli flakes. This gives you a great range of flavours to choose from with every bite.