Marrow burgers

Sometime last year I was presumably drunk when Will Ford first told me about the burger at Craigie on Main. Obviously I wanted to go to Craigie and eat it (it's really is as good as you'd assume) but he suggested that we make a clone and he pointed me in the direction of a video made by Serious Eats profiling the Craigie burger. I've done it a few times now and the most recent iteration was the most successful.

In the above linked video Chef Maws says that they use "All grass fed meat divided into three tiers... very very very beefy, a little chew like short rib, and then sirloin type stuff, and shoulder type stuff. So we add in our own bone marrow fat and suet which adds really good beefy flavor and we put some dehydrated red miso powder on there. It's tremendous flavor and even if you don't know it's there it's the umami factor. It's heightening other flavors that are going on in the burger.

That's a lot and he says it really quickly. There's a great article on eater.com called "Anatomy of an Icon: The Craigie on Main Burger" which gives us a pretty simple equation for determining which cuts of beef to use:

(shoulder or chuck or brisket) + (short rib or hangar steak scraps) + (sirloin tips or another highly marbled cut) + bone marrow + suet. 

When making this burger I always go to Savenor's to get the highest quality beef I can find, and because I know that I can get bone marrow and suet there. I try to keep the ratio even between the different kinds of beef and the bone marrow/suet. You can get a sense of the ratios I use in this picture.

Dehydrated miso powder is actually the most difficult thing to find. That or my MSD is really bad (male search deficiency). My friend gets it at the Harvest Coop in Central Square, Cambridge. Now if you have time you can buy some red miso paste and dehydrate it yourself (which I'll probably do for a future iteration) but when you're not thinking days ahead the store bought version is perfect.

Normally the Craigie burger only comes with lettuce and onion for toppings unless heirloom tomatoes are to be found which mean summertime. Which is why I was hella confused when I saw these suckers in the grocery store. One of my childhood friends works in the fruit business and has since told me that they're from Mexico, but I seriously freaked out with excitement when I saw them. People looked at me funny in the grocery store. I was not ashamed.

I forgot to take a picture of these, but I got the sesame seed buns from Iggy's. They're awesome.

The process from here is pretty simple when you break it down. Grind the meats and fats together. Form the patties (don't pack them too tightly). Cook. The cooking can be a bit technical but it's not very difficult.

If you watched the video you know that monsieur Maws uses a CVap oven before frying the burgers. A CVap oven is essentially a low temperature, high humidity contraption. Because I don't have a professional kitchen my solution is to turn the oven to 350 and add ice cubes to a tray that I stick in the bottom of the oven. I then turn the oven off and let it cool. My reasoning behind this is that you can more liquid in the air at higher temperatures, so by the time the oven has cooled down to the desired 130 the air is hopefully saturated with water vapor. Hooray science!

The rest of the process is exactly what you'd expect. Fry the suckers in a big pan using a not inconsiderable amount of butter. I usually recruit (read: order) my friends to help with plating and the likes. The jobs are:

• Bun toasting
• Plating prep (getting the lettuce, onion, and tomato on the bun)
• Cheese stuffs

That last job is the most fun by far, but it has to be given to somebody you really trust. In this case I had my buddy Andrew do it... he's a PhD candidate in chemistry at MIT and somebody I have no qualms about handing my blowtorch over to. Or didn't until I saw this picture. The person in charge of cheese is responsible for cutting the cheese (hehe) and for melting the cheese with said blowtorch. I've found that this is the best substitute for not having a salamander.

16 people, 22 burgers, total mayhem. But super fun. I want to do this again sometime soon when I can relax a bit.