Fun Things to Throw on the Grill: Or, Our Korean Burger Bender

Seriously. It's so hot.

Grilling, to me, is the answer to a lot of our summer cooking needs. Our house isn’t air-conditioned so turning on the stove or oven on a 90+-degree day is a pretty major undertaking. Clean-up tends to be fairly minimal even for ambitious meals. And sometimes we eat dinner on the deck, which always feels like a bit of a vacation and lends itself to sitting there afterwards sipping on something and watching the day wind down. Also – let’s face it – I’m kinda lazy sometimes, and grilling means that while I do the prep, David does the actual cooking, so I feel like I’m getting away with something. Note that these reasons are not necessarily listed in order of importance.

Naturally there are some challenges, such as John’s refusal to eat any piece of meat with a bone in it and his intermittent hatred of seafood. David’s dietary restrictions mean that we’re skipping a lot of grill-friendly seasonings and sauces (and rubs and salsas and sides and marinades….). And there’s always the issue of variety: you can only eat just so many brats and burgers before wishing for something a little different, something super easy, something still fairly cheap because your kids eat like stevedores and the money tree in the backyard hasn’t sprouted up yet.

The answer: fancying up your burgers big-time (and I don’t just mean the outsides). We’re already devotees of the Hamburgers of Doom, a year-round favorite that includes bacon, chutney, goat cheese, and a complicated backstory. Our most recent favorite is one of David’s finds from the depths of the internet, a burger based on elements of Korean barbeque that hits the sweet spot between crazy-flavorful and “plain burger” and means that every single one of us will eat them without complaint, sometimes twice in a week. If you scale the recipe up and eat the leftovers for breakfast and lunch the next day and then dinner another night and actually have to go to the store for a second jar of kimchi…. Well, who am I to judge? I certainly won’t say anything if you make them again the next week. And the next.

Random note: I impulse-bought a burger patty maker online last year and got laughed at – ha ha, how hard can it be to actually shape a burger? We need a special tool for this? But this nifty little Cuisinart burger press does a really nice job of making burgers that actually stay flat when you cook them without packing the meat into a hockey puck-like mass. They all end up roughly the same size, which cuts down on the at-table fighting (well, it shifts the topic of the fights, anyway). It’s a fast way to make a big batch of these, which you could theoretically freeze and have on hand for days when even a little bit of prep work feels like too much. If you’re feeling really ambitious you can use it to make stuffed burgers, which I think sounds completely amazing and yes I’d love to accept that dinner invitation.

Korean Barbeque Burgers

½ cup chopped green onions
1 ½ tablespoons brown sugar
1 ½ tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger (this is a great justification for keeping ginger paste in your fridge. We buy it at the Asian or Indian market; it’s much more convenient than dealing with fresh ginger and is a fine substitute for most applications.)
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon dark sesame oil
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 garlic cloves, minced (this is a great justification for keeping garlic paste in your fridge. We buy it at the Asian or Indian market, where it’s much less expensive than the Christopher Ranch brand at the regular grocery store and is available in different textures. Be sure to the get the paste, not the minced chunky one, which smells and tastes a little weird and isn’t a great substitute.)
1 ½ pounds ground sirloin

Combine all the ingredients and shape into 6 ½-inch thick patties. Grill about 6 minutes on each side and let stand for a few minutes before serving.

Serving! That’s the best part. You could grill some split burger buns and top these with the traditional lettuce-and-tomato combo. You could top it with some kimchi and thinly-sliced radishes. You could peel and seed some cucumbers and marinate them in rice vinegar and pile them on top. Or make (or buy) a quick seaweed salad. Or shred carrots. You could do any combination of the above and wrap this up in a big lettuce leaf.

Seriously the Best Ever Pot Roast

I feel like pot roast has gotten a bad reputation along the way – too many people have manfully gnawed their way through dry, chewy hunks of meat on a plate next to some soggy carrots and wan-looking celery for anyone to really get excited about pot roast night. And you know what? Slow cookers have the same kind of image problem, producing lots of too-soft foods with the same flavor and texture as everything else in the pot. Unable to resist a BOGO offer at the meat counter and pressed for time during this multi-sport spring, what’s a busy mom to do? Put a pot roast in the slow cooker, of course! Because damn your taste buds.

But something absolutely fantastic happens along the way, helped along by a bottle of cheap-but-not-too-cheap red wine (for the pot roast, not for you)(but if you open another bottle I’m not gonna judge you). I swear you can have this entire thing in the slow cooker and be out the door in under 10 minutes, and it will taste like Imaginary Mom slaved over a hot stove all day long and your family will be whining that there aren’t enough leftovers because they had seconds and thirds and can you make this again tomorrow?

There are 2 key elements here: (1) Don’t buy a horrible bottle of wine, because you’re going to reduce it and that will amplify whatever grossness caused someone to mark it down to $2. This is not the place to bust out a $20 bottle, but it should be something you could drink a glass of without making a face. (2) Have the right size slow cooker – the meat should fit in there without a lot of room around the sides. If it looks like a toddler in the big kid bed, you either need a smaller slow cooker or a second roast, because nothing will doom your dinner faster than a slow cooker with too much room left over to dry it out. I use a 4-quart slow cooker for a 3-ish pound roast.

This particular recipe started out over at Food52, one of my favorite food websites, with a shout out to the always-fantastic Stephanie O’Dea and her wonderful slow cooking website. It’s my new favorite, infallible way to make a pot roast, provided I start it early enough in the day. It’s nice enough to serve to company, reheats beautifully, scales up to as much as your slow cooker can handle, and generally will make you the rock star of dinner, which is no less than you deserve. The alcohol in the wine cooks off so you can give it to your kids with a clear conscience. And it should go without saying that you can open that $20 bottle and treat yourself to a nice glass with dinner, because something this delicious deserves it and so do you.

Seriously the Best Ever Pot Roast

3 lb beef chuck roast
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1-2 carrots, chopped
2-4 garlic cloves, chopped
2-3 bay leaves
1 handful of whatever fresh herbs Imaginary Mom has around the house (rosemary and thyme are my favorites) or a teaspoon or so each of whatever your personal favorites are. Also welcome: a few juniper berries, whole cloves, and/or a stick of cinnamon, if you have them on hand and want to feel fancy-schmancy
1 bottle red wine (I usually use Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon)

Season the roast with salt and pepper. Heat a couple of tablespoons in a skillet large enough to hold the roast, then brown thoroughly on both sides (if you skip this step, I totally understand. But you're going to dirty up a pan reducing the wine anyway, and you probably haven't chopped your veggies yet so just put the meat in the pan and act like the awesome multi-tasker you are). 

While the roast is browning, chop the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic. Put the browned meat in the slow cooker, then add the vegetables to the skillet. Stir and cook for a couple of minutes until the onion starts to soften. Add the entire (yes, entire) bottle of wine, bring to a boil and reduce by about half.

Pour the vegetables and reduced wine over the pot roast. Add the bay, herbs, and any other spices. Cover and cook on Low for 8 hours.

Remove the meat from the slow cooker with a slotted spoon. If you want a sauce to go on the side, remove the bay leaves and any whole spices, then blend the remaining vegetables and liquid with an immersion blender. If you’re doing dairy, drop a little butter in there and swirl it around.

If you don’t have a slow cooker, this can also be made on the stovetop in about 2 hours. Make sure you cover the skillet and turn the meat every half hour or so. You could also put it in a 325-degree oven for the same amount of time. But really, given a good slow cooker option, why would you?

* Apparently the key to successful slow cooking is having the right size appliance. It should be at least 2/3 full of whatever you’re cooking (obviously you don’t want stuff spilling over the sides – use some judgment here). Once I realized that was the reason all my slow cooker meals were drying out, I switched to the pre-kids (i.e., smaller) slow cooker for a number of dishes and was so happy with the difference. Also: slow cooker liners. I kid you not, this is the best invention ever; basically, a giant plastic bag that goes in the slow cooker insert so you can remove your food, throw out the bag, and rinse out your slow cooker insert. Reynolds makes them but I get them cheaper at Gordon Food Service.

** I was looking for a picture to add to this post but there were So. Many. Dog food. Pictures. I've just given up. You know what a pot roast looks like anyway.