Seattle Burger Night

I heard there were some decent burgers to be found in Seattle, but we decided to make our own. We started out with a burger sampler from Bryan Flannery, which he describes as containing:

• Blend #1 (High School): 25% Wagyu Chuck, 25% Wagyu Shortribs, 25% Wagyu Top Round, 25% Wagyu Bottom Round (Total Fat Content 11%)
• Blend #2 (University): 25% Wagyu Chuck, 25% Wagyu Shortribs, 25% Wagyu Eye Round, 25% Wagyu Brisket (Total Fat Content 14%)
• Blend #3 (Grad Student): 25% Wagyu Chuck, 25% Wagyu Top Round, 25% Wagyu Top Sirloing, 25% Wagyu Brisket Fat Blend (Total Fat Content 18%)
• Blend #4 (Doctorate of Alchemy): 25% Wagyu Chuck, 25% Wagyu Cross Rib, 25% Wagyu Porterhouse Tail, 25% Wagyu Fat Blend (Total Fat Content 24%)

If that sounds somewhat absurd to you, you’re not alone. But it’s not. Or maybe it is, but in the best possible way. At any rate, we made a bunch of different kinds of burgers as we ate our way through the different blends. I don’t think I can say we had a favorite blend. We made all of the burgers using a basic high-heat pan-cooking method to get a really good crust.

One favorite was a basic burger with chopped roasted New Mexico Hatch chiles, above.

Another was our take on a blue cheese stuffed burger. Stuffed burgers never cook right, so instead we made two patties with blue cheese in the middle. This also maximized the crust-to-meat ratio making for a really good burger.