Eating out or making it at home?

Whew, it has been a long year, but I got through it. It certainly was difficult at times but so much fun as well. Luckily we got to end off the year with one of the best action projects ever. We were told to eat out at a restaurant and try to recreate the same dish. Not only that, but we also had to describe the two dishes and give a descriptive comparison and recommendation. The dish that I made was burgers. I did not make fries because it was a very long process for the buns in and of itself. Now, brace yourselves because you are going to get very hungry. Here’s what happened and I hope you enjoy.

For this specific ordeal, I decided to recreate the burgers I ordered from Redwood Bar and Grill. I made my own patties and my own buns from scratch. To do that I started off with ingredients and a recipe for both the burger and buns.

Burger:                                                               Brioche Buns:
Organic ground beef                                          All-purpose flour
Salt                                                                     Active-dry yeast
Pepper                                                                Sugar
Garlic powder                                                    Milk
Smoked paprika                                                 Salt
                                                                           Eggs
                                                                           Butter

I started out with the buns because they needed a lot more time and attention. First I started with a cup of milk,a Tbsp of sugar and 2 Tsp of active dry yeast. I let that sit for 10-15 min and meanwhile I mixed my dry ingredients. I mixed 4.5 cups of all purpose flour, 1 Tbsp of salt and 2 Tbsp of sugar in a stand mixer bowl until it was all incorporated. After the 15 min was up the yeast mixture had foamed up quite a bit and that's how I could tell it was ready. I then poured in the yeast mixture to the dry ingredients along with 4 eggs. I mixed everything together in the stand mixer on the lowest setting for about 3 min. Then I added .5 cups of softened butter and turned up the speed for about 10-12 min. I then took the dough out of the stand mixer and set it in a lightly greased bowl to rise for 1 hour. I then worked the divided the dough into individual buns on a cookie sheet and let them rise for an additional 30 min. After that it was time to bake the buns at 400 degrees for 25-30 min. The buns came out piping hot and very big in size. They were piping hot on the inside as well as moist, fluffy and airy. They had a distinct sweetness to them with a subtlety of sour that you would find in sourdough breads.



While the buns were in the oven baking, I proceeded to make my burgers. I used on pack of grass fed beef. And I seasoned generously with a garlic powder, salt, pepper and smoked paprika. I then formed the patties into about 1.5 inch thick burgers. I heated a cast iron skillet to about a medium heat with the bacon fat that I cooked off beforehand. I placed the burgers in the skillet and almost immediately, you could hear the sizzle and barely smell the delicacy of freshly prepared burgers. I was going for a medium well burger so I cooked it on one side for about three minutes and the flipped to cook on the other side for about seven. After about six minutes or so, I placed the sharp cheddar cheese slice on the burger and put a lid on the skillet to hold the heat in the pan to melt the cheese and also keep the burger nice and juicy for the remaining 1.5 minutes. Before I knew it the 7 minutes were up, so I took the lid off and all of the smoky flavors from the burger along with the caramelization from the bacon fat on top of the burger, smacked me in the face. I took the burger out of the skillet to let it rest for about 3-5 minutes to make sure that the juices were well incorporated into every last inch of the burger. If I had cut into it right then and there the juices would have seeped out of the burger and most of the flavor would have been immediately lost.

After that grueling 5 minutes of waiting for the burger to finish resting it was time to assemble the burger. I cut the giant sized buns in half and placed my burger on the bottom half of the bun. On top of the burger I added a nice refreshing slice of tomato, a leaf of smooth butter lettuce, pickle and the nice crispy bacon from before. After plating, I took a step back to look at the delicacy before me and, quite frankly I was very impressed. The only thing I would change is the size of the bun. The buns were huge because I did not shape them to be smaller after they rose for 30 min before putting them in the oven. But other than that I was very pleased.

After I made the burger and bun from scratch at home I went and got essentially the same burger from Redwood bar and grill. It was called “The Redwood Burger”. It was on their menu for a price of 13 dollars and 47 cents. In the picture that was by the title of the burger on the menu, It featured a thick and wide burger with three pieces of crispy bacon. A pickle spear on the side along with the lettuce and tomato. I’m not sure if they were just having a bad day or something, but I was highly disappointed. The burger was very thin and tasted like just beef with no seasoning. The texture was very rubbery and tough and there wasn't even a pickle on the side. 

For this specific dish I highly recommend making burgers at home. It may be slightly more expensive, but it's definitely worth it. You will be able to know exactly what goes into the burger and buns if you make it at home, rather than wondering if it's healthy and meets your standards at a restaurant. For instance, my burger was organic and fresh, while at the restaurant I didn't know if it was fresh and it most likely wasn't organic. 

Michael Pollan has a book that talks about the food industry and the five ways that food has transformed. One of these is whole to refined. This specific transformation tackles grain in particular. It details how grain used to be all brown and natural to now being white and bleached. The most common example you can find in any grocery store is flour. Flour is usually white, but there are also more natural flours that are brown and even black because they have not undergone the processing that happens in a factory. My dish can relate to the concept of whole to refined because the flour I used for the buns went from natural unbleached whole grain flour to whited bleached flour. Another way that the concept relates is because of the meat I used. It was organic and grass fed, which is an indicator that it has not been processed.

I really hope that you enjoyed this project as much as I did. It was very fun and a good warmup for the culinary related things im going to be doing this summer. Now enough of reading me talk about my experience with the food. Go ahead and try it for yourself and have fun.