St. Patrick's Day Burgers with Irish Whiskey Onions & Cheddar

Get out that green shirt and the Kiss Me I'm Irish Today button because we're getting ready to celebrate one of the most hallowed days on the Burp! calendar -- St. Patrick's Day.

In some ways, we're all about (Irish-American) tradition. St. Patrick's Day is the perfect time to pull out all the stops when it comes to dinner. First, you need a slab of Corned Beef Brisket, accompanied by some delicious cabbage and a pile of potatoes (boiled, roasted, or smashed). A nice Irish Stout is usually the beverage of choice. And it would be a shame to end our St. Patrick's Day feast without a slice or two of Irish Whiskey Cake.

But, we also find ourselves longing to change things up a little bit every  now and again.  And that's when we come up with delicious experiments like Cheesy Colcannon with Leeks and Reuben Risotto.

This year, our imaginations got the best of us.  Peef was craving burgers.  And he'd read something somewhere about braising onions in Irish Whiskey.  Needless to say, we decided it sounded like a pretty winning combination.  So, we got to work.

First, it only seemed right that an Irish burger, similar to a Reuben, would be served on rye bread. So, we mixed up a batch of our favorite focaccia dough (yeah, yeah, I know -- Italian dough for an Irish sandwich...) -- only we subbed out all of the all-purpose flour with rye flour.  And we kneaded a small handful of caraway seeds into the dough.

While the bread baked, I set to work caramelizing a nice big batch of onions. When the onions were just about finished, I swirled in a nice splash of Power's Irish Whiskey, which functioned to deglaze the pan and impart a nice, smooth malty flavor to the sweet onions.

Since I figured it wouldn't hurt to tie in a little bit of "corned beef" action, I also hauled out some classic corning spices like juniper berries, allspice, mustard, coriander and cinnamon and ground them up in our spice grinder. These got mixed in with the better part of pound of fresh ground beef.  We grilled the burgers to medium-rare on our stove-top grill pan and then topped them with slices of Irish Dubliner cheese, cooking them just long enough for the cheese to melt & begin drooping down the sides.

By the time the focaccia was finished baking, we were both drooling like maniacs. Almost didn't get pictures of the burgers, we were so hungry...

And so, I present:  The Irish Burger.  This deliciously spiced grass-fed ground beef burger sits atop a slice of sourdough rye foccaccia. It's enrobed with the slightly sweet, nutty tang of the cheese and topped off with the impeccably sweet and flavorful Irish Whiskey-infused onions.

Messy to eat, but extremely satisfying, these burgers were a perfectly unconventional way to begin our pre-St. Patrick's Day celebration.

Irish Burgers with Whiskey-Caramelized Onions
Sourdough Rye Focaccia



©BURP! Where Food Happens
Want more? Read Lo's latest ruminations at FOODCrush, her Milwaukee Magazine blog.

Mad Fusion to the Rescue: Reuben Calzones for Dinner!

Normally, we'd be whipping up a nice batch of Reuben sammiches after St. Patrick's Day. And trust me, that's NOT a bad idea. But, neither is Reuben pizza... which was another option that came to mind.

Rather than trying to decide between the two, we opted to try our hand at a bit of good old fashioned experimentation. Ireland Meets Italia. Mad Fusion ensues.

First, you need the fixin's for pizza dough. But, this won't be just any pizza dough. Get your rye flour ready, honey. Cuz this pizza dough is gonna rock you like a Jewish deli... or something like that.
Once the dough is mixed, give it a short rise. Then knead in some caraway seeds, if you like them. If you'd prefer to leave them out, go right ahead. We'll just point and laugh. Loudly. Until you give in and add these delicious little seeds to your dough. Cuz they're AWESOME. But really, do whatever you like. We won't judge.
Now, lay your dough to rest again for a bit. And tuck him in. Cuz he likes that.
When he's risen all pretty-like, you can divide him up into four pieces. Roll each into a 12 inch circle. Or some sort of circle-ish (or maybe squarish) shape like you see here. Perfection is NOT the point here, people. Your calzone will not mind if he's a bit different from the rest. Trust me.
Now, you want to load on the filling... a few slices of cheese, a few slabs of corned beef, maybe some horseradish sauce (a Reuben wouldn't be a Reuben without horsey sauce at our house), and maybe a bit more cheese for good measure.
Tuck that filling in very neatly, and transfer your calzone to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Or a silpat. We opted for an exopat with very angry writing along the one side.

You should poke a few holes in your calzones so that the steam has a place to escape. Otherwise, heavens knows what could happen. Something might blow up.

You might also want to secretly brush them with a bit of whipped egg yolk so that they get a nice, sexy, sheen. But, don't tell anyone. Or take pictures. Cuz whipped egg yolk looks gross.
Bake your calzones at ... oh... 450ºF for about.. ah... 18-20 minutes. And then behold their loveliness!
You can leave them on a plate and just let them look pretty. OR you can cut them into slices and serve them to the hungry masses. Like we did.
Yum. Yum. Yum.
And don't forget to wash these down with a bit more of that delicious Irish Stout. Preferably something local. Guinness if you must.

And if you're curious about that rye flour pizza dough, we've got just the thing for you!

Rye Pizza Dough


©BURP! Where Food Happens

Cead Mille Failte: Corned Beef Brisket

I've been cooking up (and/or eating) Irish Day feasts for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, we looked forward to the tradition of boiled corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, and carrots that always awaited us on St. Patrick's Day. There were also often green bread or bagels for lunch, and even sometimes (when we were lucky) a green snowball.

My sister and I always had quite the fun sneaking into mom's store of green food coloring and dying everything green on the feast o' St. Pat's. Most years the mashed potatoes ended up green. The beer was ALWAYS dyed green by the end of the evening. And one year, we even managed to swirl a bit into the butter on the dinner table.

You can imagine what a joyful day it was when I brought Peef into the fold and introduced him to my family's traditional St. Patrick's day dinners. He had NO idea how Irish he really was until he sipped a pint o' stout and took a bite of a traditional boiled dinner. These days, Peef claims to be a long-lost Leprechaunian soul whose spirit was whisked into the present regions by an Enchanted Blarney wind. He fancies that I married him for his gold, and he's spent the past ten years keepin' it from me like a good little Leprechaun. heh!

These days, Peef and I have taken on the tradition of making the annual Irish feast. Although the side dishes have a tendency to change, the one constant is the corned beef. Yes, we realize that beef probably wasn't traditional fare eaten by Irish peasants back in the day (it was more likely mutton or seafood on feast days), but it sure is tasty. Burp's brisket is a delicious variation on the usual -- a brisket, braised in stout, with a dash of dill, some garlic, a bit of pepper, and some clove thrown in for good measure. It takes a couple of hours to prepare, but you can also short-cut the process by prepping it in the crockpot.

Ready to begin? Alright. Let's go!
It doesn't take a whole lot of ingredients to make yourself a kick-butt St. Patty's day brisket. Just a bit of good, local, Irish stout, some tomato paste, a bit of dill, some brown sugar, a few peppercorns, and about 3-4 whole cloves.
You mix all of those seemingly incongruous ingredients into a virtual witch's brew of schlurk. (Schlurk is a lovely word; use it well and often). Make all the gross faces you like at this juncture... but believe you me, when all of this is over, you're gonna wish you didn't scoff at me and my crazy concoctions.
At this point, you want to draw the Boy of the house out of his dark hiding place and hand him the package of disgusting looking corned beefyness. Boys know what to do with this sort of thing. The appropriate treatment goes something like this: Unwrap package of meat. Ignore the fact that the weird red gelly stuff is really grossing you out. Turn on the tap. Place the meat beneath the cold running waters. Pray for cleanliness.
Now that the meat is nice and squeaky clean, you can let it mingle with some veggies in the big gorgeous dutch oven your parents bought you for Christmas. That meat does love hangin' with its veggie kinfolk, doesn't it? Reminds us all that we're all woven from the same fabric. Amen.
OK, enough of the silliness. It's back to cooking.
Now, go back and get that bowl of schlurk that you lovingly prepared earlier. You whisked it well, didn't you? Hope so! Cuz now you want to pour that mess right over the top of Mr. Meat and his Veggie Friends. Get him going at a nice simmer, and leave him there for a good... 3 hours or so. Start checking him for doneness at around 2 1/2 hours, keeping in mind that every meat has his own time frame. Some take 3 hours. Others take 4. You can't rush love, honey.
When you pull him out of his bath, you might choose (as I do) to slip him into the oven for a while to brown up his exterior bits. But, that's completely up to you.
Any way you slice it (we suggest thinly, and across the grain), this corned beef is going to be flavorful and tender. And just perfect for your Irish Day feasting. Or reuben sammiches. Or breakfast hash. Or whatever your lil heart desires.

We like to serve him up with a nice glass of our favorite local stout (Lakefront Brewery Snake Chaser), a nice big bowl of cheesy colcannon with leeks, and some steamed carrots. Oh, yes -- and don't forget the horseradish!

Burp's Corned Beef Brisket

Erin Go Bragh!
And if corned beef isn't quite enough o' the green for you, check out these Seven Weird Green Foods.

©BURP! Where Food Happens