Minetta Tavern-inspired anchovy burger

For a long time I've been wanting to use anchovies in my burgers at home - I fricking love the kick of salty, savoury umami they bring - and since I first had anchovy butter on a steak many moons ago, I have always thought they'd go brilliantly with a well-aged burger patty.

It's taken a while for the planets to align to enable me to test out my recipe. I had been reading about the Minetta Tavern black label burger which gave me the missing piece of the puzzle. I was trying to work out what else to include in the burger that would work with the rich earthiness of an aged burger patty, and the strong dominating flavours of anchovies - and then it hit me, just like the simplicity of the Minetta Tavern burger which incorporates just four elements - top quality beef, caramelized onions, a custom brioche bun, and clarified butter - you don't NEED anything else.

Beef Sliders with Scampi Fries

It's been a while since I posted a recipe - truth be told we've been doing up our house and moving our kitchen to a new, bigger home, so things have been challenging, but I finally found myself with a free weekend, and so had the chance to whip up a new burger recipe for the blog and get some photos taken.

This first recipe is a Hamburger Me! take on the classic slider. As 'slider' and 'mini burger' become interchangeable in foodie vernacular (something which angers me intensely), this is an opportunity for me to demonstrate what a slider traditionally is - i,e a thin piece of beef steamed through onions on a griddle. I cheated a bit and gave one side of the burger a sear, but that's the way I like 'em.

Smash Burgers and Homemade American Cheese

A title tells a thousand words...no, hold on, that's not right.

Actually in this case it is.

I've been doing some home burger experimentation in preparation for Burger Off!, a big BBQ I'm holding in the summer for some of the members of #TeamBurger, London's ace, crime fighting* burger eating elite.

And the menu today is smash burgers with homemade American Cheese.
*they don't fight crime.

ELSCo Burgers: Testing the Mettle of the George Foreman Grill

From time to time, I cook burgers at home. That may not come as a surprise to many of you. "You're a burger blogger", I hear you cry, "it's what you do." But actually, home burger cooking is relatively irregular in my household.


There are certain moments, certain times however, when it would be frankly rude to not knock up a couple of burgers, and one of these moments presented itself to me last week. A PR company had been in touch with me to see if I would do a review of one of their George Foreman grills, and they'd send me one if I was interested.


Now, my previous experience of George Foreman grills was they were a waste of space. I had a mini one while I was at university, and it was about as effective at cooking as putting the food in your cupped hands and breathing into them. However it gave me an excuse to do a review that involved cooking burgers, so I acquiesced and two days later my George Foreman Grill and Griddle arrived.

The unit is a combination of a lidded grill and a flat griddle, and it's huge. If you don't have much worktop space in your kitchen, this may not be for you.