Mini burgers

Twin mini towers

I first saw these incredible burgers at Yahoo Shine and tried to keep it a secret from my folks. But you know how the internet world is – and soon enough my girl was ogling over the melted cheese from the pixels and demanding it for dinner.

And since I am going through a cooking drought, I might as well give it a try. It was a lot of work but I made light wok of it with the bread machine. In between making the burgers, hubby was fixing parts of the kitchen and the food taster did kitchen updates. So yeah! The recipe was a mighty challenge but take away the ‘repair man’ and hovering food taster, this recipe is a lot simpler than it looks.

Thanks to Mandy for sharing with Yahoo Shine. It is a while since I was so motivated to try out something as awesome as this.

Since I used odds and ends from my cheese board, the taste will evolve the next time when my smorgasbord has new leftovers – which makes this burger a constant surprise to eat.

Credits : Adapted from Lady and Pups

Sweet potato mini buns ( 10 ) :

A )

60g cooked sweet potato, riced

220g bread flour

15g fine sugar

1g fine salt

B)

40g butter

180 ml low fat milk

1 tsp instant yeast

Method :

Brown the butter in a hot pan, swirling until it stops sizzling and butter turns brown.

Pour the browned butter into cold milk and stir.

Make sure the milk solution is warm and not hot to the touch ( about body temperature ).  Stir in the yeast and let it sit for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, in a big mixing bowl, combine all components in A.  

Make a well in the flour. Combine the flour with milk and knead to form a pliable and smooth dough , 10 minutes. At  this point, I transfer the contents in the mixing bowl to the bread machine and set to ‘dough’ cycle, 1.5 hrs.

When the dough is kneaded, leave to ferment, 1.5 hours ( or dough cycle 1.5 hours ) until dough doubles in bulk.

Dough is ready when finger pressed on the dough springs halfway back.

Divide the dough to 10 portions, to make 10 sets of buns. On a floured top, roll the cut out dough and shape to smooth mounds.

Leave to ferment until balls increase to nearly but not quite double in bulk, about 20 minutes in hot, hot Singapore.

Preheat oven to 200C.  Bake the buns in 200C for 17 minutes.

Cool on a rack. When sufficiently cooled, cut mini buns to halves to make 10 sets of burgers.

Now, let’s get on to the meat burgers!

Meat burgers  ( 8 portions ) :

Dust the pattie for easy handling

Ingredients :

400g meat mince

2 T hickory smoke sauce

pinch of sea salt flakes

dash of black pepper

130g grated and cubed cheese ( I use a mixture of blue cheese, cheddar and swiss cheese. )    

2 T riced sweet potato

Mix above contents well until the meat and cheese becomes a homogenous blob. Chill for 30 minutes.

On a floured work top, pat down the meat.

Cut out 8 portions of the meat with a cookie cutter, the diameter about the size of the buns.

On a hot pan, heat oil. Throw in a couple of slivers of garlic and a pinch of salt flakes.

On medium heat, pan fry the burgers until the meat is seared and brown and good for turning over. Ditto the other side.

Gently lift the burgers onto a plate to cool and let the juice be absorbed back to the meat.

And finally, the ( super simple ) burger spread !

Ingredients :

1 ripe avocado

2 T mayonnaise

2 T of hazelnut oil

Method :

Mash the avocado. Stir with oil and mayonnaise to prevent it from oxidizing.

Now the drumroll ….. Assembly time!

To assemble, spread the avocado spread to the cut surfaces of the burgers.

Introduce the meat patties to the buns.

Spread pickles or whatever you fancy.

Enjoy!

PS : you might have noticed that the recipe is 2 patties short. I  used the last 2  burgers for other uses. To make exactly 10 patties, use 500g of mince , tweak upwards the cheese to 150g with 4 T of sweet potato mash.