Pork Burgers with Fried Brussels Sprouts

So, I graduated.  Officially graduated from culinary school.  I now have a degree in Culinary Arts.  Pretty freakin' awesome.

How did we celebrate?  Well, thanks to a fantastic gift card from my parents, we now are the proud owners of a meat grinder attachment to our KitchenAid (as well as a pretty awesome juicer - Andy's been on this homemade juice kick - and I gotta tell ya, I'm loving the fresh juice combos he's coming up with!).

So the first thing I did?  Went out and bought some pork sausage casings and ground up some sweet pork sausages.  Let me tell you - without an actual sausage stuffer attachment for our KitchenAid or an actual manual sausage stuffer - it's pretty time consuming to stuff some sausages.  I ended up MacGuyver-ing my way through with a pastry bag fitted with a large tip and ended up with decent results - although I'd much rather dish out the $12 for the sausage stuffer attachment for next time.

Anyway, as I got tired of manually stuffing sausages, I didn't end up going through all of the ground pork I had.  With the rest of it, I made these pretty sweet burgers.  So good.  And yeah, I definitely don't plan on buying ground meat ever again (well, let's keep it real, maybe once in a blue moon... or if Andy goes grocery shopping and ends up bringing it home).  But seriously, freshly ground meat is definitely more superior than the grocery stuff!

Ingredients:

1 lb. ground pork (I had about a 70/30 ratio of meat to fat)
salt and pepper, to taste
Mayo, optional
pepperjack cheese, optional
fried egg, optional
burger buns, or sandwich bread in my case

Fried Brussels Sprouts:

1 lb. brussels sprouts, quartered and blanched
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon oregano
oil, for frying

You of course could season your ground meat with whatever you fancy, but I like to keep it simple with just a bit of salt and pepper.  I like dressing up a burger as a whole, rather than trying to really flavor the meat.  Because well... the meat speaks for itself.  Right?  Right.

Anyway, form the meat into thin 4 ounce patties.  Think Steak N' Shake burger style. 

Heat a large saute pan under medium high heat and add a little bit of oil to coat the pan.  Place two patties in the pan and cook until starting to brown.  Flip over and place cheese (if using) on top of each patty.  Continue to cook until the patty is cooked through and the cheese is melted.  Place one patty on top of the other and transfer to a plate to rest.  At this point, you can assemble all of your burger toppings, and you can really be as creative as you want here.   But I had some extra brussels sprouts in the fridge and needed to use them up, so why not fry them, right?

Heat oil or deep fryer to 325 F.

Combine the flour, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, cayenne pepper, and oregano.  Mix well.  Dredge the brussels sprouts in the seasoned flour and dust off any excess.

Place in deep fryer and cook until golden brown and crisp, about 2-4 minutes.  Drain on paper towel-lined plate and season with salt and pepper, to taste.

To assemble this awesome burger, toast some burger buns lightly (or use sandwich bread like I did - I had everything else on hand and I was too lazy to leave the house to get some burger buns).  Get a good smear of mayo on both pieces of bread.  Top the bottom bun with the two burger patties.  Then place a good amount of the fried brussels sprouts on top of the burger and top with a fried egg - good and yolky!  Then close is on up with the top of the bun.

And there you have a pretty darn good burger.  Different, but oh so delicious.

What's your favorite burger combo?!

Sauteed Carrots & Brussels Sprouts

Happy Labor Day!  Hope you guys will be grilling out, having good times with good friends, and enjoying the last days of summer and first days of early fall!

Our weekend was pretty fun.  Dinner at 732 Social was A-MAZING!  They make the BEST Shrimp Mac-N-Cheese and my steak was huge and perfectly cooked.  Definitely a good time with good friends.  Then afterwards, we headed over to Cake Flour for dessert... and we were not disappointed.  I like Cake Flour for 2 reasons:  #1 they use all natural ingredients in EVERYTHING they make.  No artificial anything is found in anything produced there.  #2  they use local ingredients and everything I've ever had is phenomenal.  P.S.  They told us when we were in that night that they're actually going to be featured on the Food Network this fall, so check it out if you can!

Saturday we went down to WorldFest and we were not disappointed there either.  The hardest part was deciding what to eat out of all the booths they had there!  I wish I had brought my camera, but since we went kind of later, I was afraid I wasn't going to have good lighting for good shots.  Maybe next year.  But we ended up settling for some Red Curry from Thai Orchid (quite delicious, but Simply Thai is still our favorite!)  And then, as we were walking around, there was a line probably 50 plus people deep.  With a line that big, you know that whatever is at the end of it was going to be delicious.  So we hopped in that line and waited for over 30 minutes.  And when it was finally our turn, we realized what the fuss was all about.  La Colombiana was serving up Arepas!  These were huge arepas, packed full of your choice of chicken or beef, beans, lettuce, tomato, sour cream, and your choice of green or red hot sauce.  These were WELL WORTH the wait!

It seems like Louisville has had TONS of stuff going on the past couple of weekends.  Or maybe it's that we haven't been home-bodies and actually ventured out the past couple of weekends.  Whatever it is, I'm liking it!

So enjoy your Labor Day and I'll leave you with the side item we served with our Fennel-Garlic Chicken Legs!


Ingredients:

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 shallot, minced
6 carrots, peeled and sliced
1 teaspoon rosemary
salt and pepper, to taste
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 cup brussels sprouts, chopped

In a large saute pan over medium high heat, melt the butter.  Add shallots and cook for about 1 minute.  Stir in carrots, rosemary, salt, and pepper.  Toss to coat well.  Pour in chicken broth and bring mixture to a boil.  Cover pan and reduce heat to a simmer.  Cook for about 7-10 minutes, or until carrots are barely tender.

Increase the heat back to medium high and add in brussels sprouts.  Cook, uncovered, for about 5 minutes, or until the brussels sprouts are starting to soften, but still crisp, and liquid is almost entirely absorbed.

Serve as a side dish to any grilled, roasted, or pan-seared item!  So practically anything!  Enjoy the holiday!

Pan Seared Trout w/ Roasted Brussels Sprouts & Potatoes

All I can say is TGIF! Thought for the weekend: Growing up, my parents always told me to clean my plate. And if I didn't, they'd always say "don't waste your food, there are starving kids in China, ya know" etc. And I'd always just naively shrug my shoulders and mutter under my breath, "well mail it to 'em then"... but now that I'm older, if you really think about it... How much food is actually wasted in your home? I was reading an article the other day that stated an estimated $600 per person is wasted in leftover food per year. $600!! That's 2 car payments! And that doesn't account for the food wasted in restaurants, which you can imagine is a hell of a lot more than that.

I'm not saying I'm the queen of using things up, yeah, lots of things go to waste. But I try to eat my leftover (or save them for co-workers that gladly eat them), and I try to use things up like meat bones (by giving them to my dogs or putting them in stock). If I could start a compost pile in my backyard without stinking up the neighborhood, I'd do that to, but research on my part needs to be done. What do you do to prevent food wastefulness? Do you think you fall into the average waste category of $600 annually? Do you think you're above or below?

Anyway, I've been trying to cook as much seafood as I can lately. I know the prices of things are going to skyrocket unless they can get this oil spill under wraps (which I'm highly doubting, and I just don't understand why because of all the technology we have at our fingertips). Trout is pretty cheap and it's a tasty whitefish, and pairs equally as nice with some roasted vegetables...

Ingredients:

2 trout fillets
salt and pepper, to taste
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon paprika
juice from 1 lemon
1-2 tablespoon olive oil, divided
1 teaspoon dried parsley
4 Yukon Gold potatoes, diced
1/4 lb. Brussels Sprouts, quartered

Preheat oven to 400 F.

In a medium bowl, combine potatoes and brussels sprouts. Mix in 1 tablespoon olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste. Mix well and place in a single layer on baking sheet. Bake in oven for about 25-30 minutes or until potatoes are soft and starting to brown.

When vegetables are about 5-10 minutes from being finished, heat a large skillet under medium high heat and add remaining olive oil.

Combine salt, pepper, garlic, thyme, basil, paprika, parsley, and lemon juice. Pour mixture on top of each trout fillet and gently rub in, if desired.

Place trout, skin side down, in skillet and cook for about 4 minutes, or until skin is nice and golden brown. Carefully flip over and cook an additional 2 more minutes, or until fish is white throughout.

Serve on top of roasted vegetables and dig in!

This was a light and flavorful meal. The trout had tons of flavor with the added spices and the simply roasted vegetables were crisp and fresh. Enjoy!