Why Hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe! I’m your author of agony, Jon O’Guin, and today’s dish is a riff on one we’ve mixed before, now in Burger Form. I…legitimately don’t know how much I’m going to have to say on this one, because I’m going REAL off the cuff here, so if you want to avoid watching me muddle through a thematic or narrative core, just click this link to get cooking. Everyone else, let’s dig in.

Balked by, then Back to, Basics

The reason I’m struggling with this dish is, really, because while I think it’s a cool idea, and I had fun making it…I’ve kind of already discussed most of the relevant details about it. Like, at its core, this is a fusion dish of American burgers and Korean Bibimbap, and we’ve: already done a whole MONTH of fusion foods, as well as some broader discussions of the concept of fusion cuisine at all, already made bibimbap, AND already discussed broader trends of Korean cuisine. And this recipe comes from the same people we got our bibimbap recipe from, so it’s also not like we’re really riffing a ton on ingredients: it’s still shiitake, Spinach, rice, gochujang, sesame oil, etc. There is ONE new element, which we’ll get to in a bit, but other that that, it really is kind of just “make a really skimpy version of bibimbap, and put it on a burger”. And you know what? That’s fine.

Burgers are, typically, fine.

One of the advantages of the burger, when you get into it culinarily, is how it’s a relatively blank canvas: other than buns and a meat patty, vegetable patty, or meat mix,  you can put whatever you want in it. The freedom in vegetables, sauces, meats, and other toppings allows you to do a lot of interesting things. Like, literally, off the top of my head, I bet I could make a solid “baked potato burger”: Make a croquette-like patty of mashed potato, fried crisp, top with sour cream, cheddar, green onions, and bacon. Boom.

I mean, this basically looks like a McChicken patty.

As such, the burger is a great zone to try breaking down the “grammar” or components of a dish, because it forces you to reassemble the dish in a way that matches the framework of a burger. The best comparison I can make here is Tim Ferriss, who, in his 4-Hour Chef cookbook, talks about how Scrambled Eggs are an amazing dish to use as a ‘flavor canvas’: when working with the flavors of a new region, try making a small batch of scrambled eggs mixing two or three prominent flavor combinations of the region, to give yourself an idea of what you’re working with. He even gives 14 examples, like “Mexico – Mix in ¼ tsp chili powder, add lime juice after cooking”, “Northeast Africa – Mint, garlic powder and cumin”. And this is a good idea for two reasons: first, as noted, it gives you a relatively low-stakes first window into a cuisine, by letting you experience some of its flavor combinations in a simple setting, AND it can help you break down the ideas of what the most distinctive flavors in a cuisine are. Like, Korean Scrambled eggs, by my measure, would HAVE to include either gochujang or kimchi, if not both.

But because the Burger format requires the food be arranged in layers, and has its own form of ‘grammar’, as it were, it’s a slightly more thorough task to “translate” a dish. Like, take Spaghetti and Meatballs. You obviously can’t just make a normal batch of spaghetti and meatballs, and serve it on a bun. At the minimum, you’d need to make like, a spaghetti nest to trap the meat-balls inside. What if you made a “patty” that was a mix of noodles and beef? Would that work? A lot of places make the buns out of formed patties of noodles, which is an option. I’ve seen recipes that just make the patty spiced like an Italian meatball, and then fry spaghetti noodles as a side. Maybe you make a small layer of noodles on the bottom, a single big “meatball” patty, with cheese and sauce on top. You see what I mean? The rules of what make a viable burger force you to adapt the original recipe. So the burger is actually a pretty good place to start exploring the concept of how to properly ‘fuse’ cuisine.

Quesadillas are a nice middle-ground between eggs and burgers, both in fusion, and in food in general.

This is an idea we may explore in more detail next week, or the week after, depending on my schedule, where I walk you through the process of creating the basic framework for something like this, as we completely invent our own Asian Burger. (It depends on when I get the time to go shopping/cook)

But for now, let’s hop to the process itself, and give ourselves plenty of time to tackle this sucker.

Salt, Sour, and Spice

Now, fundamentally, just like the Bibimbap recipe we made before, this is a series of smaller recipes being used for one completed task: to properly make this burger, you need to make: Rice Crust Chips, Pickled Bean Sprouts, Sesame-Soy-Spinach-and-Shiitake, Burgers, and Fried eggs. That’s FIVE recipes, all bound up in this one recipe. Luckily, they’re mostly pretty damn easy. So let’s start at the beginning: Rice Crust Chips

As I mentioned in our Bibimbap post, a lot of Bibimbap, particularly dolsot (or “stone-pot”) Bibimbap ends up with a layer of Crusted/crunchy rice. This recipe replicates that by…making a small layer of crunchy rice. You’ll need pre-cooked rice, so if you don’t have/buy any, the burger technically uses 6 recipes. You want about a cup of cooked rice for the recipe. And all you’re going to do is crust it up in a pan.

Crusting things is a hard process to photograph from above.

Throw some oil on the pan, get it barely smoking, then spread the rice in a thin layer across most of the pan, and cover for 1-2 minutes, so the bottom can get that crust started. Then, pop off the lid and turn down the heat to cook for another 5-6 minutes. The rice should have formed a solid mass, take it out of the pan, break it into ‘chips” about an inch or two wide, and let cool on a paper-towel lined plate.

The second step is the pickled bean sprouts. We did not HAVE bean sprouts in our local shops, so we used clover sprouts instead: not as crunchy as intended, but easier than like, cutting batons of carrot or whatever. Mix together a brine of cider vinegar, salt, and other ingredients I definitely haven’t forgotten because I made Nate do this bit (sugar, sugar was the thing I forgot), and submerge the sprouts in the brine as you prep and cook everything else.

It’s kind of a weird texture, but that’s what you get with substitutes.

Next up, the sesame-soy-spinach-and-shiitakes. Get some shiitakes, or other mushrooms, I’m not picky, and slice them thin. Get some spinach and chop it coarsely, and mince a clove of garlic and one green onion. Then, it’s time for another 5-ish minutes of cooking: toss the mushrooms into the pan, and let them get some browning on them for 2-3 minutes. Then, add the spinach, garlic, green onion, soy sauce, and a little more sugar. Cook covered for 2 minutes, then uncovered for 2 minutes, so that spinach can wilt, and move the whole thing to a bowl, tossing with a little sesame oil.

So that’s the veggies, the rice, and the pickled sprouts done. What else does this burger need? Oh, right, burgers. And weirdly, this is the part where I think the whole thing went wrong on our end. Specifically, the recipe calls for ¾ inch thick patties, and we used a LITTLE more meat than we were supposed to (2 pounds instead of 1.75 pounds) because we didn’t have any 85% beef in our area, so I just mixed 80% and 90%.

We did the mash
we did the meat-fat mash
the Meat-fat mash.

So our patties ended up thicker than the recipe seemed to call for, and I legitimately don’t know if 3/4” would be small enough: These were hefty patties, and we cooked them perfectly fine, but the relatively lightly seasoned beef (only a sprinkle of salt on the outside before frying), made for a weird chunk of…just not a lot of interesting flavor going on in the middle.

The burgers LOOK okay, and they are okay, they’re just not amazing.

Like I said, definitely at least partly my fault, for using too much meat, but we’re talking like, 15% more meat, and I definitely think this needed to be like, 25% less. Like, we ended up with burgers that were ½ a pound a patty, instead of .4375, and  I think these would have been better at 3/8s or 1/3 a pound.

The burgers are also cooked kind of weird, since they’re so large: instead of just grilling or frying the patties, you sear them, and then finish them in the oven, like you would a steak. A process that irritated Nate on the grounds that it was too many steps, and led several minutes of confusion between him and me, where I said I had to finish the burgers on a baking sheet, and he said I should “foil it” then, telling me to put aluminum foil on the sheet so that he wouldn’t have to wash it later. I heard “OIL it”, and expressed my confusion at the need, and our sentences were generic enough (“Do you think we need to?” “I think I want to” “The recipe doesn’t say to…”  ) that we didn’t realize misunderstanding until I poured a tablespoon of oil onto the sheet, and Nate asked “what the hell are you doing?” “I’m oiling it, like you wanted!”

Here the pan is, FOILED, not oiled.

Anyway, sear the beef and bake it, and then, while it rests, fry some eggs. Then, drain the sprouts of their brine, and toss them with the spinach-and-shitake mix to form the Sprouts-Spinach-and-Shitake Salad Greens. Once it’s all ready, you can bring it all together, putting the burger, then the vegetables, then the rice chips, then the egg in the burger, with a little bit of gochujang spread on the top (and bottom, if you want) bun.

Feed Me, Seymour

And the result is…perfectly fine. As noted, the beef is  thick, and thus it mutes out all the other flavors. Maybe if we’d gotten an AMAZING sear on the burgers, it would have worked better, but I think that would work even better with thinner burgers. (or maybe our buns aren’t wide enough, so our burgers are being forced taller than they should be) As a first try, it’s a solid result, and one I think would be pretty spectacular with the meat-to-other-ingredients ratio better sorted.

THURSDAY: JON REVIEWS A NETFLIX SHOW, BACK ON THE STREETS IN LATIN AMERICA.

MONDAY: WE’RE EITHER GOING TO BE IN CHINA, VIETNAM, OR THAILAND, IT DEPENDS ON HOW THINGS GO. BUT ANOTHER BURGER IS DEFINITELY IN THE CARDS.

Recipe

Bibimbap Burgers

Serves 4

Ingredients

                Brined Sprouts

½ cup cider vinegar

3 teaspoons sugar,

1 teaspoon table salt,

4 ounces (2 cups) bean sprouts

Rice Chips

1 tablespoons vegetable oil,

1 cup cooked white rice

Sesame-Soy-Spinach-Shiitakes

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and sliced thin

5 ounces curly-leaf spinach, stemmed and chopped coarse

1 scallion, minced

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 garlic clove, minced

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Burgers

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

¼ teaspoon table salt

1¾ pounds 85 percent lean ground beef

                Eggs

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

4 large eggs

                Burger assembly

3 tablespoons gochujang, plus extra for serving

4 hamburger buns, toasted if desired

Preparation

1. Whisk vinegar, 1 tablespoon sugar, and ¾ teaspoon salt together in medium bowl. Stir in bean sprouts, gently pressing on them to submerge; set aside.

2. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. Divide burger blend into 4 lightly packed balls, then gently flatten into ¾‑inch-thick patties. Using your fingertips, press center of each patty down until ½ inch thick, creating slight divot. Cover and refrigerate until ready to cook.

3. Heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in 12‑inch nonstick skillet over high heat until shimmering. Add rice and press into even layer. Cover and cook, without stirring, until rice begins to form crust on bottom of skillet, 1 to 2 minutes. Uncover, reduce heat to medium, and continue to cook until crust has fully formed, 4 to 6 minutes. Break rice into 1‑inch pieces and transfer to bowl; set aside. Wipe skillet clean with paper towels.

4. Heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in now empty skillet over high heat until shimmering. Add mushrooms and cook, stirring often, until mushrooms begin to brown, about 2 minutes. Add spinach, scallion, soy sauce, garlic, and remaining 1 teaspoon sugar. Cover and cook until spinach begins to wilt, about 1 minute. Uncover and continue to cook until spinach is fully wilted, 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer spinach mixture to small bowl and stir in sesame oil; cover to keep warm. Wipe skillet clean with paper towels.

5. Season patties with remaining ½ teaspoon salt. Heat 1 teaspoon oil in 12‑inch skillet over high heat until just smoking. Using spatula, transfer patties to skillet, divot side up, and cook until well browned on first side, 2 to 4 minutes. Gently flip patties and continue to cook until well browned on second side, 2 to 4 minutes. Transfer patties to rimmed baking sheet, divot side down, and bake until burgers register 120 to 125 degrees (for medium-rare) or 130 to 135 degrees (for medium), 3 to 8 minutes. Transfer burgers to platter and let rest while cooking eggs.

6. Crack eggs into 2 small bowls (2 eggs per bowl). Add remaining 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to now-empty skillet and heat over medium-high heat until shimmering. Swirl to coat skillet with oil, then working quickly, pour 1 bowl of eggs in 1 side of skillet and second bowl of eggs in other side. Cover and cook for 1 minute. Remove skillet from burner and let sit, covered, 15 to 45 seconds for runny yolks (white around edge of yolk will be barely opaque), 45 to 60 seconds for soft but set yolks, or about 2 minutes for medium-set yolks.

7. Drain bean sprouts and stir into spinach mixture. Spread gochujang on bun tops. Serve burgers on buns, topped with spinach mixture, rice, and eggs, passing extra gochujang separately.