One cool item I picked up from Caw Caw is smoked slab bacon, or “bacon ends”, the large chunks of trimmings from when the belly is cut after it has been cured and smoked. Pieces of bacon this large are hard to come by, and it has some great applications. Frisee au lardon and carbonara were the first uses.
Then I tried to get a little creative. Once I added large crispy pieces to a warm tomato salad.
Another day when I started thinking about how to make a good vegetable based burger, I thought to myself that just because the burger is a vegetable patty, it doesn’t have to be vegetarian.
I thinly sliced carrot and onion and sauteed them in oil, added white wine to deglaze, and finished up the sauce with butter and veal demiglace. I threw it in the processor with peas, basil, black beans, the crispy bacon, and some salt and pepper.
I formed a patty and seared it in a pan on very heat heat.
Besides the fact that there was way too much moisture, it was relatively successful. The flavor was a little smoky, plenty salty, it had good body, and I really liked the aroma from the basil. I’d like to try this again and make it drier and thinner so it can retain it’s shape while eaten.
I had some leftover filling which was perfect in a breakfast burrito the next day.
Why do all vegetable based burgers have to be for vegetarians? I think it would be cool/unique if a restaurant in town had a badass non-vegetarian veggie burger.
