Cured

The quintessential burger for Memorial Day

The quintessential burger for Memorial Day

We still get a chuckle when we think back to an exhibition at London's Victoria & Albert Museum that sought to summarize national cultures in a single object. The curators clearly had a sense of humor. (In a self-deprecatory moment, they chose the W.C. for the English.) We Americans were boiled down to … the hamburger. It is, after all, ‶mass-produced, cheap, efficient, but essentially juvenile.″ The curators forgot to mention that, properly done, the hamburger is also delicious. Americana in the heart of Texas In our part of the country, Memorial Day launches the grilling season. Mind you, we'll be in our back yard, at least six feet from anyone, and there will just be the two of us. Since the celebration is rather...Read More

Decadent hamburger with black truffles

Several high-end restaurants (we're talking about you, Daniel Boulud) serve a magnificent wintertime hamburger with foie gras and shaved French black truffle on top. We can't top that. When we decided to take our Australian truffle bounty and see if we could build a summer burger, we were inspired by the great bacon burger we ate last year at Cured in San Antonio. (Here's the recipe.) We knew the truffle would respond well to a bit of fat and to acid, so we plumped up the ground beef with some fattier ground pork and added a thick slice of heirloom tomato on top. Not caring to heat up the house making brioche buns (and we're not that good at baking bread), we purchased some great...Read More