Brioche Burger Buns

There comes a time in isolation when you run out of an ingredient that you really require for dinner to go ahead as planned, but you can't really justify leaving the house for the "non-essential" nature of that item.

For me, that item was burger buns. I needed to use up some bacon and lettuce - so halloumi/bacon baps were an obvious choice. But I didn't have any baps! Curses!

I promise I added lettuce to this, a small hint of green amidst the meat, bread and cheese

I also had a half pack of instant yeast that I wanted to use up, so making my own was the obvious choice, despite never having made these before. Luckily, this recipe was easy. Apart from working with a slightly sticky dough, and taking a little time, these are really straightforward.

Soft, sweet,and SCRUMPTIOUS!

Feel free to experiment, next time I see myself brushing it with garlic infused butter, and maybe topping with a little mozarella. Also, toasted with butter! GAME-CHANGER.

Pizza Topped Burgers

How's that for a slice of fried gold?

Mmmmm, hello weekend!

What is a girl to do when she has some pepperoni which is about to go past its sell by date and she bought too much mozzarella?

Well..

Pizza burger time!

I’ll confess, I’m not a big cheese fan. I don’t like the texture of it when it isn’t cooked, and I really don’t like cheese that is strong smelling/tasting. For me, mozzarella is the perfect cheese – it’s got that classic “stringy” cheesey texture and it doesn’t taste overwhelmingly cheesy. I have tried to incorporate it into my life as much as possible.

The secret to the mozzarella here is to keep the heat trapped in to allow it to melt all over the burger. Unfortunately it doesn’t get crispy on top, I think I’d probably need a working grill for that! Everytime I put the grill on, the fire alarm also goes off..

Serves 4

Beef Burgers and Beer-Battered Onion Rings

I kind of love that the onion rings are about the same size as the burger..

Om nom nom.

This is just food that people want to eat. No one can turn down a homemade onion ring. And batter it in beer? You’ll have a queue outside your door! The absolute key to delicious onion rings is to soak them in buttermilk before cooking, it takes away a lot of the sharp taste that onions can have and both sweetens and softens them. They have a crunchy, yet melt in the mouth quality that I’ve just never gotten from any other onion rings.

Now, I know that I have made burgers before on this blog, but I am always looking for ways to improve recipes in my repertoire. The addition of cream crackers is, I suppose, a substitute for breadcrumbs found in other recipes. I feel like it added an interesting texture element but didn’t really alter the flavour. If I had crackers on-hand in the future I’d definitely add them to my burgers.