Recipe: Green Chile Cheeseburger
Hello, Lover…
For those of you who have been with me for a while, you know that I’ve been on a comfort food cooking-kick for the past x-number of weeks since we’ve been “sheltering in place.” And as a Texicana stuck in the concrete jungle of Manhattan (you can take the girl out of southwest Texas, but you can’t take southwest Texas out of the girl), I have long been dreaming of and craving a green chile-smothered cheeseburger.
In this recipe, sauteed sweet white onions and fragrant green chiles crown an American cheese-laden beef patty cooked to a perfect ‘medium rare’ in a skillet. The finishing touch? Everything is sandwiched between a squishy, warm potato roll that’s been lathered with a famous bbq sauce from my hometown (I see you, Charcoaler!).
Note: All of the ingredients I use to make this burger are available at your local supermarket, save for the bbq sauce from my hometown. That is, of course, assuming you’re not in El Paso, TX. Don’t like bbq sauce? Use ranch dressing or something else that you love!
TGIF and happy eating, y’all!
Supplies/utensils needed for this recipe:
Skillet
Metal spatula
Small dish
Foil
Small plate (to place cooked burger patty)
Soup/deep bowl (to cover the cooked burger patty and keep warm as it rests)
Ingredients:
Makes 1 serving (double, triple, or quadruple the recipe if you don’t live alone!)
1/2 tablespoon olive oil or butter
1/4 cup chopped white or yellow onion (if you’re not an onion fan, nix it!)
1/3 cup chopped green chiles
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 ounces ground beef (80/20 fat ratio)
2 slices American cheese
1 burger bun of your choice (I use a Martin’s Potato Roll)
Bun dressing of your choice (ranch dressing, BBQ sauce, mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, etc.)
Method:
30-minutes prior to cooking, remove your beef from the fridge.
If not yet formed, gently form your beef patty in to a 1’ thick puck and set aside. Don’t overwork the patty!
About 20-minutes in to your beef being taken out from the fridge, heat 1/2 tablespoon olive oil or butter over medium heat in a skillet.
Add onions plus a liberal dash of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Saute for a few minutes until onions become more translucent (3-5 minutes). If you’re not using onions, skip to step 5.
Add green chiles and continue to saute for 3 additional minutes.
Remove contents from skillet and set aside in a small bowl covered with foil (to keep warm).
Meanwhile, season the beef patty with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
Raise skillet temperature to ‘medium high’ for about 3 minutes. The heat from the skillet should be hot enough to where you can feel the warmth when you hold your hand 3-4 inches above (the skillet).
Add beef to the skillet and set your timer. Make sure not to touch the beef as it cooks until you have to flip it to the other side.
Cooking times: 3 minutes/side for very rare, and another minute thereafter per side for each increasing stage of doneness. I set my timer for 4 minutes/side, and it revealed slightly more “done” medium-rare.
With a metal spatula, flip the burger to cook on the other side. Set your timer.
Remove the beef from the pan and on to a plate - top patty with one of the cheese slices - and cover the cheeseburger with a bowl tall and wide enough to completely cover it. Allow to rest for 5 minutes.
Turn the burner off beneath the skillet but don’t remove from the stove.
Heat the bun in the microwave for apprx. 10-15 seconds.
Split the bun in half.
Return the split bun to the skillet. For about a minute, rub each half around the pan so that it can toast and soak up all of those yummy leftover juices and brown bits.
Dress the bun with an optional slather of your favorite sauce/dressings, accouterments (ranch, BBQ sauce, mayo, lettuce, tomato, etc.) and top the bottom bun with the remaining piece of cheese.
Add the beef patty and crown it with the chile/onion mixture. Top with the other half of bun!
Bon appetit!
Bon appetit, y’all!
…
Until we eat again,
Lindsay, The Lunch Belle