Homemade Burgers and Buns

The heat has been unbearable the past few days here in the southern part of the USA. It is truly horrible and they predict it to last for a bit longer. I really love being in my kitchen and usually a little bit of heat doesn’t bother me too much when I am doing something I really love like cooking a meal for my loved ones, but for the past few days I haven’t even wanted to go in the kitchen to get ice for the drink that is constantly by my side to keep me hydrated in this weather. It was the same last night when it came to deciding on something for dinner, hubby finally decided that it would be pizza from Pizza Hut so we ordered two of them and took them over to our youngest sons house so the grandkids could help eat them……besides they have something we don’t……………… CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING!  On the way back home, after eating with the gang hubby remarked that he really doesn’t enjoy pizza anywhere out anymore since I got ours down to something so great at this point. The pizzas we ordered had a nice taste but the crusts, one of which was hand tossed and one deep dish were sub par to us, they were thick, greasy and too gummy, tasting like the dough was still raw, and that was after re-heating later slices too. I guess our days of eating any outside pizzas are numbered, they just don’t seem to satisfy us anymore, add to that the fact that it cost us $39 for the 2 pizzas and a pasta dish (which by the way was great) and it just makes no sense to go out for pizza when I can make about 10 pizzas for that same amount.

Today I recieved my favorite bouillion (from Amazon.com) and had some ground beef on hand here, plus the rolls I had baked this past week, wrapped in the freezer and so I did have the stuff to make us some nice burgers. I mixed the beef with about two teaspoons of the bouillion powder, some onion powder and some fresh ground pepper and mixed it all together well. I made two burgers out of the mixture, one a lot smaller than the other, hubby is a big meat eater and I’m not so he naturally got the bigger. I buttered the buns lightly and toasted them on the griddle before putting the burgers on the pan. To say he enjoyed it is putting it mildly, he was moaning about how great the beef itself tasted, the addition of the bouillion really ups the great beefy taste to them, how great the roll was because it definitely held all that burger and didn’t fall apart as the meat juices sunk into it, and the great slightly sweet taste of the bun alone. At first he didn’t believe these were the same buns I had made late last week but after I showed him the rest of them all wrapped and saved in the freezer he said we wouldn’t be buying regular burger buns anymore either…….so, no more pizza out, no more burgers out, no more buns out……do you think I may be shooting myself in the foot when I tell him I want to go out to eat again? For those who don’t read here regularly you can find out all about my favorite beefy bouillion and my homemade buns in last weeks posts.

Favorite Maggi Beef Ribs Bouillion

Maggi Beef Rib Bouillon

A few years ago on one of my road trips I came accross this package in a store and picked up a few of them. I can’t remember what store it was in or in what state that was, back then I was doing lots of driving and stopping along the way into local shops and such was my rest time. When I got home here and was making a roast one night I discovered that I was out of my home made beef broth that I usually have in the freezer and decided to try one of these cubes in the liquid the roast was cooking in. WOW!  What a flavor the gravy had that night!  Not thinking that this simple bouillon cube could have contributed all that flavor I cooked our next roast the way I normally did with some home made stock and that night the deep intense beefy flavor was somewhat dull. On the third roast we had I once again added this simple cube and BANG the great depth of tasty beef was back.  Now I am a good cook and I make mostly all of the stocks we use here for sauces, soups and gravies but this bouillon is something special and I wanted to have it on hand, I had a problem finding it and I still haven’t found it in any local places but thanks to my mentioning on a group I belong to one of the posters found it on Amazon.com and I have now ordered a pack of six canisters of this at a great price. If you see this in a local store do yourself a favor and pick up a pack to give it a try on any beef you are braising, the taste will knock your socks off. I have always sought out Maggi products and used them, perhaps because I remember my grandmother using some of them when I was young but mostly because I love the flavor they add to lots of different foods.

Canister

UPDATE:

This is the way I have now ordered it from Amazon.com, it came in a pack of six canisters, each weighing 7.9 ounces, they have a shaker type top on them which makes using them easy. I have to admit I ordered 12 of them, I will share them with the boys and show them the wonders of what Maggi products can do for the foods they make. When I bought the original package I paid almost $2 for the few cubes, the pack of six shakers cost me $12.37 on Amazon and shipping was free because I had also ordered a book I had been wanting for quite awhile. If you order from there and also sign up to have them auto shipped (anywhere from 1-6 month interval) the price dropped to $10.51 and the shipping was automatically free for the auto shipped product. The burgers I made last night and added this too has a great taste to them, hubby and I both loved them. I will rub all of our steaks and beef roasts with this now that I have a nice supply of it. Later this week I want to make a beef and barley soup and you can be sure this will be in it too. I hope you find it locally in your area and give it a try for anything beef you are making, I think you’ll be happy with the added flavor it imparts.

Pork Tenderloin, Mashed Potatoes and Spinach

When it is hot out you still need to prepare a dinner for your family, none of us I don’t think stop eating just because the temperature rises although we might wish we could! Sometimes it is too hot to stand outside and cook on the grill too, or we may not have access to a grill if we live in an apartment or co-op that doesn’t allow them. When the temps soar I look for things to make that won’t have me turning on the oven too much or spending too much time in my HOT kitchen. We don’t have central air conditioning and we live in the south about 20 miles from the Gulf of Mexico………to say at times it gets really hot here is an understatement! Tonight I made some pork tenderloins, fifteen minutes in a saute pan and they are done, the potatoes took the longest as I made fresh ones but even they only took about 20 minutes. If I manage to get in and out of my hot kitchen in under 30 minutes I consider that great when it is sooooo hot and humid. I know we could go out to eat but then what about the cost of doing that so often, plus is there anyplace near you that doesn’t serve mostly fast food? We do have some good local restaurants that we like but again, at the cheapest they would cost us about $25-30 for a meal each day if we went that route, I don’t know about all my readers here but I do know that we could not afford to do that. The other options are the typical fast food chains and they are not great for your health if you eat a steady diet of that kind of stuff. So tonight I made the pork tenderloins that I picked up yesterday at Sams, there were two packs of two tenderloins packaged together, I froze one two pack and we had the other for dinner tonight and hubby will have it for lunch at work tomorrow, forgot the middle son also came by and had some. If our son had not come by we would have had enough leftovers for another meal but we enjoy having him come by for a meal……….he figures he is just stopping by to check on “the old folks” but we know it is more for some of moms cooking! So for the four tenderloins we paid a little under $14, that breaks down to about $7 worth of it for tonights dinner for three and hubbys lunch tomorrow, not bad in my book at all.

     The meat was taken out of the fridge about an hour before I planned to cook it and was seasoned and allowed to warm up a little. The seasoning is something an old employer of mine used to use and we love it, you just sprinkle it on whatever you wish and it adds a lot of flavor, you can’t get much simpler than that, you don’t have to sit a figure out what seasoning goes with another and you don’t have to worry about dinner being too bland, this one seasoning does it all with just a shake of the jar! We haven’t found anything it hasn’t enhanced the flavor of but you do need to be aware and use it sparingly, also shake the jar before each use as the spices tend to sink to the bottom and using it without shaking it might give you a salt overload. There is no place locally that sells this so if you can’t find it in any of your markets either then there is always Amazon, they have just about everyting anyone is looking for. Here is a picture of the jar it comes in, it is made in Italy and I think if you try it you will be amazed that something so simple can make your food taste so good, but that’s just my opinion, everyones tastes vary and you might not be as enthused as me about it.

Seasonello Italian Herb Salt

So tonight as I said I made fresh mashed potatoes that were boiled for 15 minutes then whipped with some heavy cream, sour cream and butter. The spinach was just chopped finely and steamed. The meat was cooked, after seasoning, in a saute pan over medium heat for 10 minutes. See simple and yet a great dinner. The gravy was some I had frozen form our last pork dinner and was heated in the pan I sauteed the tenderloins in after they had been removed and place aside to rest before being sliced, I brought the gravy to a rolling boil to make sure it was nice and hot for the meat and potatoes. I was planning on making some fresh rolls too but it was so hot and humid today I gave that idea up, I didn’t want to have to turn on the oven at all.

 I hope that wherever you are it is cooler than it is here! If not think about cooking some shorter prep and cook time items for your dinners too.

Maggie Seasoning

On my recipes you will see the use of this seasoning. I have been using this since I started cooking more than 40 years ago. I grew up in a blue collar immigrant neighborhood of mainly german and irish and so our foods naturally used the ingredients that our elders had used in their old countries. The large bottle on the left I found in a local Chinese grocery store and cost $5.99, the small bottle came from another local Chinese store and cost $8.39, what the difference is I am not sure except that the writing on the smaller bottle is all in french and I can’t read french. I will say that the smaller bottle tastes the same but seems to be stronger when I use it, I have to literally use it by the drop in my cooking, whereas the large bottle I use by the half or full teaspoon. I use this seasoning in most meat dishs as it really give the gravy and sauces you make have a nice taste, if you see it in your grocery store (usually in a small bottle) pick one up and give it a try, remember to use it sparingly until you determine if you like it…….a little goes a long way, also cut down on the salt in any recipe you use it in.

Great tomatoes

See this can…….keep your eyes out for it. I bought this back in October when I visited my sister up in North Carolina and finally used it this week. WOW, these were some great tomatoes, no bitterness at all and a nice taste straight from the can. I managed to find them locally too and will pick up a case of them this week. Why a case? Because it seems that whenever I find something that will work for a lot of the dishes I make it just seems to disappear from the store shelves to make way for something inferior. By picking up a case I will be sure to have them on hand for at least a little while. Try a can if you see them at your local market, I hope you will enjoy them as much as I do. I think they would even make a nice sauce, with seasonings added, for our home made pizzas. Let me know how you like them if you try them.