Hamburgers

Hamburgers feel to me like one of those quintessential summer foods. I know that a recipe for hamburgers seems pretty basic, but I am very excited to find the following recipe in the Cook's Illustrated Summer Grilling 2010 special issue. It has solved a dilemma: how do you cook a hamburger enough to kill all of the bacteria without turning it into a dry hockey puck? If you add the following ingredients to your ground beef before forming it into hamburger patties, the hamburgers stay amazingly moist and flavorful, even when they are cooked until well done. The other thing that makes a big difference is using ground beef that is 80 percent beef and 20 percent fat. For hamburgers, I think the extra bit of fat is really worth it. I've adapted the recipe as follows:

Hamburgers
serves 4 adults

Ingredients:

• 1 slice of Ener-G tapioca bread
• 1 Tbsp. Lactaid milk
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp. onion powder
• 1 lb. (or the odd 1 .2 lb. that my supermarket puts in the package) 80% ground beef

Instructions:

Cut the slice of bread into 1/4-inch cubes. Put the bread in a medium-size bowl and mix with the milk until it forms a paste. Add the salt, pepper, minced garlic, and onion powder, and combine using a spoon. Break the ground beef into small pieces and add to the mixture. Combine gently with your hands until thoroughly mixed together. Shape into hamburger patties, making an indentation in the center of each so that the hamburgers do not puff up in the middle when cooked. Cook on a grill, or on a George Foreman grill if it's raining (like it was for us yesterday).