Veggie burgers: Make. 100 percent. Veggie burgers are great! Making them at home will get you 100 percent real ingredients, with no weird fillers.
Immersion Blender Mayo
• 1 cup avocado oil
• 1 large egg (fresh, organic, room temperature)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• ½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
• ¼ teaspoon salt
Place all ingredients in a jar or cup. Insert the stand mixer, and mix on high for about a minute. Then slowly move the mixer up and down, until it’s all white and looks like mayo! (About another minute or two.) Refrigerate until ready to use. Will keep for about two weeks.
Refrigerator Dills
• 4 pickling cucumbers
• 8 sprigs fresh dill
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled but kept whole
• 4 teaspoons black peppercorns
• 4 teaspoons coriander seed
For the Brine
• 2 cups water
• 4 tablespoons white vinegar
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt (or pickling salt)
Cut the cucumbers into round slices or spears. Divide the dill, garlic, peppercorns, and coriander seed between two clean pint jars. Then pack as much cut cucumber into the jars as possible.
In a pot, bring the water, vinegar, and salt to a boil. Remove from heat. Carefully pour this brine mixture over the cucumber and fill each jar. Screw on the lids, and put in fridge for a day or two before using. They will keep like this for a few months.
Dijon-Style Mustard
• ½ cup mustard seeds, a combination of brown and yellow
• ½ cup white wine
• ½ cup white wine vinegar
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon honey
In a small bowl, mix everything except the honey, and let it sit for about 24 hours.
The next day, add the honey, and mix in a blender. Put it in a lidded jar, and keep in your fridge for a day or two before using. The mustard will stay good until you eat it all.
Peas and carrots, Forrest and Jenny, peanut butter and jelly, and most importantly, Burgers and Buns. All legendary couples.
Simply put, if you begin with a great patty, and use a fresh homemade bun, you can stop there. With nothing else, you’re already a winner. Taking the burger further to legendary status is easy after you have the two key components.
I am a butcher. I’ll stick to the meaty parts and leave the bun part to Greg. He’s a bread wizard.
There are as many opinions on what makes a great burger patty as there are leaves on a tree. I think it comes down to three key factors: source, fat content, and grind.
I source grass-fed and finished beef for my burgers. It makes me feel good knowing the animal was naturally fed and had a pretty good life. No hormones, antibiotics, or any of that other stuff I don’t want to eat. Besides, grass fed and finished beef (no feed lot, no grain) has an amazing flavor. When you start with great beef, there’s really no need to jazz it up with anything other than salt and pepper. Like a ripe tomato, they’re delicious as-is, whereas a tomato in winter is going to need serious work even to get it to “OK.”
Fat content controls the flavor and juice of a burger. Simply put, if a grind is too lean (90 percent or more), a burger will taste dry, tough, and pretty bland. A grind that is too fatty (30 percent or more), will eat greasy, and good luck trying to cook these on a grill. (Good-bye eyebrows.) At my butcher shop, V. Miller Meats (shameless plug), we shoot for 80/20. This allows the burgers to be flavorful, cook easily, and taste great. We start the blend with about 50 percent chuck for a good base (chuck is naturally about 25 percent fat), and add various trimmings from the morning butchery action. This usually includes sirloin (lean), rib eye (fatty), and other delicious bits from all over the animal—always shooting for that 80/20 percentage.
The grind and patty processes are overlooked all too often. I have very few absolutes in my world, but one of them is grinding beef only once. This allows for the burger to still have a meaty texture, and for the fat to cook into the burger, and not fireball on the grill. One way you can tell if your beef has been ground more than once is to ask. Butchers love to chat about this stuff. What’s in the grind today (remember fat content)? When was this ground (freshness counts)? How many times was it ground? If more than once, it tells me the fat is likely to break out when I cook the burger. If the butcher seems disturbed or annoyed by your questions, maybe go looking for a new butcher. When making the patty, I find a ring mold works great. I put down parchment paper and lightly pat the beef into the mold. Lightly packing the meat makes a little more delicate patty, and gives a great meaty mouth-feel to your burger.
I hope this helps. I hope you dig this book. Greg has been a great partner in crime on many meaty top-secret projects, and you’ve never seen a bunch of butchers swoon like when he comes into the shop with a batch of “tester buns.”
Eric V. Miller
V. Miller Meats Craft Butchery
To me, organic farming is not just a method of growing fruits and vegetables, but is more like a way of life, dedicated to preserving and protecting our agricultural lands, enriching our understanding of natural biological processes, and creating a more vibrant community centered around the food we eat every day.
The true meaning of organic agriculture begins and ends with the health of our soil. The earth has, over millennia, provided us with all the nutrients and minerals we need to grow spectacular produce, and, as an organic farmer, it is my job to preserve the biological processes already present in the soil, so that we can enjoy the bounty of the harvest for generations to come.
By avoiding pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals, I can allow the hardy ecosystem of earthworms, good bacteria, and other parts of our living soil to thrive and work their magic in giving us delicious crops to enjoy at our dinner tables. Several techniques, including good crop rotation, well-timed plantings, minimal tillage, cover cropping, efficient irrigation, and the incorporation of organic compost into the soil, all contribute to building a robust organic farming system.
One of the most essential aspects of being a farmer is the opportunity to help foster community around the food we provide. So while we build our soil, we also share the fruits of our labor with all our friends and neighbors at our local farmers’ market. If I can introduce a customer to vegetables they have never tried before, and get them to take those vegetables home to their families, where they cook new meals, share different tastes, trade stories, and create stronger bonds over the food I produce, it makes the hard