18 June 2010

Quest For The Best Burger In The North

• beef,
• best burger,
• best burger recipe,
• Blog,
• burger,
• burger recipe,
• cooking,
• ethical,
• Food,
• foodie,
• foodie news,
• lifestyle,
• Northumberland,
• recipe,
• Recipes,
• sea salt,
• spice,
• spices,
• Steenbergs,
• Steenbergs spices,
• Yorkshire

I have decided, like many before me, to go on a quest; a quest for the perfect burger. 

I want to do this in part to find something close to perfection, but also it will give me an opportunity to find some of the best local producers of breads and beef and other ingredients.  But here's the downside, I have to put limits on my search, otherwise I will need to travel the world - I will let others do that for me and I would welcome your input for other great producers or recipes.  My rules for producers are that they must be located north of the Humber and south of the Tweed and on the east coast of England; those rules will seem arbitrary to most, but for me they are logical - I am a born and bred Northumbrian who lives in North Yorkshire.

So how to start this quest.  Well, I can only think about doing it very systematically, almost like a science project.  I am firstly going to do two things in parallel - I am going to test a number of recipes to find the best (in my family's opinion) burger recipe, while simultaneously looking for the best local burger bun and/or recipe.  I have decided to do these together as I expect my wife and kids to get sick of very similar tasting burger recipes, so I will need to mix up what I am doing to keep this quest moving forwards rather than getting stuck in the culinary doldrums.  I will then run on into cuts of meat, proportions of fat and best local sources of beef etc etc.

As for recipes, I am going to stick only to beef, but we will be hunting for two recipes - one the best simple burger recipe, and the other, the best more complex recipe.  The former will be able to showcase the best beef when we get there, letting the meat do the talking, while the second can be a bit more showy.  I completely expect to change the rules as I go along, so don't expect me to be overly strict.