Sliders

Growing up, my mom would sometimes get me frozen white castle burgers from the grocery store.  I would microwave them for 60 seconds and just go town on them.  You could not go wrong with a greasy slider with just diced onions, beef, and a slice of American cheese.  Six years ago, I finally went to my first White Castle restaurant which was in St. Louis, MO.  I was there for business, and when I found that there was a White Castle by the place I was staying at, first chance I had I would go check the place out.  The sliders were similar to their frozen counterparts, but were much fresher and tastier.  Even their crinkled fries wasn't even too bad.   Then a few years later, the sliders craze really started to shape up at different restaurants in Pittsburgh.  From the simple to the complex, you could not really go wrong from the basic slider to the pulled pork slider to the lobster slider(they really exist The Industry House Starters).  These places I've mentioned have inspired to make my own sliders.  I decided to make two types of basic sliders with a few twists.

If I'm going to make a slider, it needs to at least have one ingredient in season and local.  So with that said, I got some zucchini that were grown at Brenckles farm.  The yellow zucchini gives the slider a bright color to the it.  You'll want to cook until it's soft and has char on both sides.  I also sprinkled in some salt as well

I bought two types of cheeses; Vermont cheddar and NY sharp cheddar.  Slicing them to thin slices proved to be a challenge since they are hard cheeses.  It would have been better if shredded them instead.  They didn't quite melt the way I wanted, but they still went well with the burger.

I diced up one white onion, and covered it with water.  I put a spoonful of the onions and the onion water on top of the burger when it's in the skillet being cooked.  Doing this gives the burger an awesome onion flavor and steams the burger as well.

I whipped up some chili mayo sauce using mayonnaise and sriracha put together.  I also bought a can of hummus spread.  It turned out that for 3.5 ounces it was only 99 cents.  It was originally $3.99, but it was being discontinued and sold for $1.99.  Then you automatically get a dollar off of that hence 99 cents.  It would have been better to make homemade hummus, but for time purposes I took it easy.

Now here's the meat(pun intended) of the blog.  I decided to get a pound of ground chuck and rolled them to 20 small meatballs and sprinkled sea salt on them.  The ground chuck has 80/20 fat ratio, and it's perfect because the amount of fat will give the burger so much flavor.  Plus when the meat cooks, it doesn't lose too much of its size.

On the left is the Slider with NY sharp cheddar, diced onions, and the chili-mayo sauce.  On the right is Vermont Cheddar, diced onions, zucchini slice, and hummus spread.  Both burgers were pretty good, fun to eat, and hit the spot.  I ended up eating 6 of them, and almost went into a meat coma.  My buddy D had 10 of them and I watched him slowly go into a meat coma.  Not even watching a George Carlin stand up act on Netflix saved him.  It just goes to show that my burgers were pretty powerful.  Here are the instructions below.  You can adjust it any way you want it.  This is for the Hummus burger

10 Potato Rolls

1/2 lb of ground chuck made into 10 small meatballs

10 small rectangular slices of Vermont Cheddar Cheese

10 yellow zucchini slices cooked till soft and translucent

10 teaspoons of hummus spread

1/2 white onion diced

sea salt to taste

Butter(1/2 tablespoon for each cooking session) for pan

1.  Split four potato rolls.  Spread 1 teaspoon of the hummus spread on the top portion(on the insides) of the potato roll.  Repeat for the other 3 top portion of the potato rolls.

2.  Put diced onion in a medium bowl, and cover with water

3.  Heat large skillet on medium heat.  Put the butter in

4.  As you are waiting for the skillet to be fully heated, sprinkle sea salt on all the meatballs

5.  Once butter is melted and skillet fully hot, put 4 meatballs on the pan and flatten them with a spatula.  Cook for two minutes.

6.  For each burger, pour a spoonful of the onions with the water on top of the burgers and flatten the burgers again so the onion meshes with the meat.

7.  Flip the burgers, and for each burger put a slice of the vermont cheddar cheese, a slice of the zucchini and the bottom portion of the potato roll.  Cook for 1 to 2 minutes depending on your desired doneness.

8.  Slide the spatula under the burger and lay it on the inside portion of the top potato roll.  Flip the burger and Wala....a slider.  Repeat 3 more times.

Repeat directions 4 more times except steps 2 and 4.