Sorry for the late post. This week is always my office's 2nd busiest week of the year, so I've been working late, and a little tired. My work schedule made it so that when I cooked it earlier this week, the burgers didn't finish until after 10 PM. I had to make that up to the fiancée.
In the first series, I did a smoked burger for the Houston Texans, and some said that barbecue would be more apt for Dallas, so I took that, but made it a bit more elaborate. My family loves barbecue, and at one time I also had some coworkers who did too. They introduced me to something in barbecue called a fatty, and this whole burger series probably never would exist had I not learned about it.
A fatty involves some kind of ground meat with a filling that's wrapped in a bacon lattice and smoked. It's frequently a breakfast thing with sausage, cheese, and eggs. When I tried one for the first time, I immediately started getting ideas for how I could play around with the concept, and this was before I was interested in cooking as I am today. I think that's where I developed an interest in taking an existing format but mixing and matching ingredients to make something completely new. I made Big Mac fatties, jalapeno popper fatties, a Belizean stew chicken flavored fatty, but my dad's favorite is the Wisconsin fatty that uses brat filling as the ground meat and is filled with Ellsworth cheese curds, onions, and sauerkraut. My old man has asked me to make that one a few times now.
So for Dallas, I went back to that and made what I'm calling a Fatty Melt. I toasted the Texas toast like I would for a patty melt, but I sprinkled some onion powder and garlic powder over the mayo when I toasted both sides of the bread. Each slice of bread got a slice of sharp cheddar. The onions topping the patty were coated in oil and smoked. That's something I got from my dad. When he started smoking brats, he started smoking the onions for topping them, and it's just delicious. I could eat the onions by themselves. It beats the pants off of grilled onions. Nothing tops the sweet and smoky flavor.
Each patty started as two three ounce balls that I flattened and filled with more sharp cheddar, finely diced onion, and finely diced homemade pickled jalapeno:
- ½ Cup Vinegar
- ½ Cup Water
- 1 Clove of Garlic
- 1 Tbsp of Sugar
- ½ Tbsp of Salt
- Sliced Jalapeno Peppers
The jalapenos were something I was able to make early to make this process a bit easier. After arranging the filling I would just crimp the sides closed. That part requires some attention to make sure they're leak proof.
I made my normal bacon lattice for the patties, but then I cut it into quarters to wrap around the top of the patties. The bacon is what you use to gauge the doneness. Since it has a literal meat shield between it and the heat, just watch the bacon to decide when to pull the patties.
These were topped with a homemade Texas barbecue sauce:
- ¾ Cup Ketchup
- ¼ Cup Apple Cider Vinegar
- 2 Tbsp light brown sugar
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
- ⅓ tsp Chili Powder
- ⅓ tsp Cumin
- 1 tsp Salt
- ½ tsp Pepper
I loved this burger. Before I started playing around with burgers as much as I do now, barbecue burgers were among my favorites. It's a bit messy, but it was satisfying, especially since work has been exhausting this week.
