Overthinking a Cheeseburger

The other day in cooking school we had a competition for best hamburger. We only had an hour to prepare it, but we had about 24 hours to think it over. We were working in groups of three, which is maybe a few too many people for making one dish, but resources are limited.

I was adamant that I wanted a non-screwed with burger. None of the foie gras sandwiched between ground sirloin and sautéed truffles for me - simple ground chuck, cheese, and basic condiments. I wanted to highlight the meat, which should be the star of any burger.

But I knew full well that others in class had the same idea. What was needed was a way to set this burger apart, show creativity without compromising the platonic ideal of meat, cheese and bread.
Fortunately, I was working with a certified food scientist. So we decided to play with our food.

The plan was to take all the basic condiments of a burger - lettuce, cheese, tomato, pickles, onions, ketchup (catsup?) - and make them fill a different roll. In other words, we were going to make one ingredient appear to be another, without changing the taste.

After kicking it around, we decided to make mayonnaise appear to be cheese, pickles would become ketchup (catsup?), cheese would become lettuce, tomatoes would be made out of red wine (a bit of a departure there, but as it turned out, very tasty), and onions would become pickles. All of this was to be accomplished through the use of gums and gelatin, with a dose of food coloring.

A couple of problems immediately surfaced. The first, and hardest to overcome, was nomenclature. When someone said they were working on the pickles, did that mean that they were working with pickles, or working on making pickles? We got around that, finally, but it ate up more time than it should have in working out the details.
The second problem (and ultimately the one that hurt us the most) was a question of color palette. We didn't have time to experiment, we needed to get it right the first time, and that was...unrealistically ambitious.

The first things we needed to do was turn onions and pickles into the most liquid form we could manage. That was solved by running them through a robot coupe, then finishing them with an immersion blender. We then added color and gelatin. The pickles worked out as a pretty good ketchup - the gelatin thickened up enough to give it a viscous, ketchup-like consistancy. The onions (which were going to become pickles) were gelatinized, placed into molds, and placed in a blast chiller.

As you can see, they were a bit too green. They also did not set up the way we anticipated.

The cheese was going to be made into lettuce. This actually turned out pretty well. We took a white cheddar and shredded it with a microplane. A few drops of green coloring tossed together gave us a pale green iceberg lettuce color (we needed to do the mixing in the walk-in cooler, though, since the fine shredded cheese clumped really badly in the warmth of the kitchen). The cheese was then placed on crumpled foil that we sprayed with non-stick cooking spray, placed in a very hot oven for five minutes, then moved into the walk-in to set up. Right before service we peeled the "lettuce" leaves off the foil. It worked like a charm. We didn't get the full "crunch" that iceberg gives, but we were close.

The ersatz cheese was going to be made of mayo. We broke the emultion under heat, and incorporated the zantham gum (apparently gelatin doesn't work well with non-acidic substances). We added color, and placed it into a blast chiller.

Color, again, became a bit of a problem. This is not a trick of photography, it really was this orange.
It also didn't quite set up the way we wanted. More gum would have maybe been a good idea, but without further experimenting, there is no telling if this would have ever worked the way we wanted.

The "tomatoes" were a last minute addition. I wasn't crazy about the idea, but there wasn't time to argue. I'm glad we did it, though, because it tasted fantastic. I encourage all of you to, at the very least, do a red wine reduction for your burger at least once.

We set the wine into makeshift molds (along with more gelatin) inside our now very crowded blast chiller. When they came out we added sesame seeds to them to mimic the appearance of a beefsteak tomato slice. The color was wrong, but it was a nice touch.

We got everything de-molded and plated in time for judging, though the overall color scheme ended up being a bit off-putting. Several of the judges would not taste it until we explained what was going on. I can't blame them. The whole thing had a sort of "Loony Toons" appearance; food is rarely in that shade of technicolor, and we eat with our eyes as much as with our mouths.

Strangely enough, the only judge who unequivocally liked the burger was the hard-core European traditionalist. The person who I would have expected the most outrage from. I suspect it is because, as a European, he had less of a preconceived notion of what a burger should look like, therefore he wasn't as disturbed by the cartoony color.

The burger tasted great, though, and I am sure that, had the tasting been done in a dark room, we would have done better in the judging. I'm also certain that, given another opportunity (or two) we would have the color problem fixed. I'm not sure if this is something that would be practical in a restaurant setting - too many specialized bits of equipment and too much prep time - but it sure was fun, and I think I learned more from this single experiment than I have in years of just cooking regular burgers. By taking everything out of its normal context, I have a better appreciation of the role those condiments normally play.

But seriously, try the red wine reduction.