"Things You Should (Not) be Doing with Your Food: Ish #2" or "My White Whale"

Now my other sister has also started a blog (awesomely titled Pizza Bribe) which she is academically obligated to populate on a semi-regular basis for school it seems. Hopefully having that competition will motivate me to keep up with this guy up to date a little better.

And now I'd like to talk about meat.

I cooked my first steak ever for my girlfriend Jen (<--- see I mention you!) on Memorial Day and it was amazing... despite the fact that I dropped it onto our soggy deck after I finished cooking it. But still we ate it... and legitimately it was one of the best steaks I've ever tasted. Apparently all it takes to make great steak is $3, a $30 charcoal grill, and eight or so minutes on each side. Seriously, if you like steak, I don't remember what it was called or the brand or anything, but we found it at Kroger. It's some kind of organic brand and you get two cuts of it that are correctly proportioned so that it doesn't make you TOO fat and it's only $6. The same steak I cooked for $3 would have easily cost $20 to $30 in a restaurant. Good lookin' out!

I on the other hand did not have quite as much success with my Memorial day meal... I attempted, for the second time, to create the Minneapolis staple Juicy Lucy, as made famous by "Man vs. Food". As you can see from the image here it's a burger in which the cheese is actually cooked into the burger and it's supposed to pour out all steamy, hot, and liquefied when you bite into it... Mine did not.

I believe my first problem is that I used Kroger's pre-rolled patties of ground chuck which is both not very good and not very moldable. I used two patties that probably came in a little under a quarter-pound each, seasoning both sides and topping one with cheddar cheese. I then attempted to simply place the second patty on top of the one with cheese and mold the edges together with my hands to seal the cheese inside. So now I had a burger that was a solid three and a half inches thick with some cheese in the middle that I expected to cook through.

Well I threw it on the grill and cooked it with the lid closed for a good eight to ten minutes. At this point all was well. It was in tact and I figured it was about time to flip it because eight minutes on one side for a burger already seemed like overkill. Well I scooped it up, tossed it over and low and behold, the outer layer of the thing is barely done and the side starts pulling apart revealing that the middle hasn't even started to brown over. I attempted to get it back to the first side for a few more minutes but I was already starting to lose hope. Four or five more minutes with the lid closed and I figured the sum'bitch had to be done on at least that side. I open the lid and smoke is simply pouring out everywhere. Pieces of the burger had started to slide off and detach falling onto my charcoals. I figured, "No big loss, this thing was too big to cook all that junk anyway," so I went ahead and gave it a flip... the other side starts pulling away into the grill and I'm now starting to see the inner core of cheese.

God damn it!

Well, this went on, back and forth to each side trying to get the damn thing to cook through; each time checking it a bit more meat falling on to the charcoal and stinking up the place. Finally I was left with a shell of a disfigured burger; cooked well done on the outside and still mushy and very pink on the inside with no signs of gooey cheese anywhere.

My second attempt at the Juicy Lucy was once again an utter failure. I nibbled on the cooked edges of it for a minute and then decided it wasn't even worth it at the risk of food poisoning as raw meat tends to do to me and tossed the thing. It was a sad day for meat.

I bitterly munched on my baked bean with potato chips on into the night wondering how the Lucy had evaded me once again and dreaming of our next bout together...