Sara’s Weeknight Meals: Season 03

The hamburger is so all-American and well-loved that by comparison even baseball and rock’n’roll are alien and obscure cults. We eat them year-round, at any time of the day or night, plain or fancy. Remember Wimpy? Deep in the pit of our soul, almost all of us share the cartoon everyman’s monomanical hunger, which drove him to propose the exact same deal to his pal Popeye over and over again: “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

I love burgers, too, but I’m at least slightly discriminating. I need to know what went into my burger. And the best way to be sure of your burger’s pedigree is to grind the meat yourself. This is easier than you might imagine. All you need is a free-standing meat grinder or an attachment to your stand mixer. (Kitchen Aid makes a very good one). You can also order a reliable ground meat mixture online — see sources below — or hunt up a good butcher, as we did in Philadelphia at Esposito’s. (By the way, don’t you think Jordan is a dead ringer for the young Bill Murray?)

So this show is an ode to hamburgers…with a little nod to their eternal sidekick, French fries. Every night is a good night for a burger.