One of the problems with living in an apartment complex is that the drifting scent of bbq and hamburgers can send one into a meat frenzy. Usually this happens on the way home from work, when fatigue and the lack of any meat in the freezer lead to a predictably vegetarian dinner. However, for some strange reason this was not the case on Saturday night. First, we were walking to the store when we turned into meat zombies and second, we had one package of ground beef in the fridge. Why was the store necessary? We didn’t have bread, lettuce, or ketchup, and a burger is very very sad without any of these.
While the local grass-fed beef (blah blah blah) was good, it bowed before Sir Kensington, a gourmet scooping ketchup. That may sound a bit absurd, but traditional ketchup was ruined for me when, a few years ago, my friend Karen sent me a box with homemade canned yellow ketchup. Karen’s ketchup was the stuff of dreams: tangy, slightly sweet, eat-it-on-a-spoon yum. This is a reminder Karen, I want that ketchup recipe! Until Sir Kensington I had forsworn eating non-homemade ketchup (except on fries out of the house) and, let’s face it, burgers are just not the same without it. So thank you, Sir Kensington, for enabling me to eat an entire jar of ketchup in less than a week, you saucy minx you.
I wish I had a recipe for hamburgers for you, but I did exactly the opposite of whatever the Commonsense Kitchen suggested (by accident mind you). It suggests handling the ground beef as little as possible (I mixed mine ferociously) and not salting it until after cooking (how the heck does that work???). So yes, go buy good beef, do as little to it as possible, and top it with ketchup.
Black Holes for Breakfast 