FANNY BURGER

There is one dish that will divide as well as unite every chef, cook, backyard hooligan and the like: the burger. This is a burger tribute to the greatest TV food celebrity of all time, Fanny Craddock. We are grinders and admire British Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal’s ‘granulated’ burgers, but hate to see good beef fillet ground up into a burger. No, let’s keep in the tasty cuts — the stuff the people eat. Let’s not turn the humble burger into some form of egocentric nourishment! This is definitely a commitment burger, as you need to start the preparation one or two days before you actually wish to devour it.

MAKES 8–10 BURGERS

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) beef brisket

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) beef short ribs (ask your butcher to cut the bones out)

500 g (1 lb 2 oz) chuck steak

30 g (1 oz) sea salt

300 g (10 ½ oz) pork back fat

rendered beef fat, lard or oil, for pan-frying

TO SERVE

caramelised onions

good cheddar cheese

soft burger buns

sauce or ketchup of your choice

Clean all the meat of any gristly bits and reserve any fat. Dice all the meat into 3 cm (1 ¼ inch) chunks; you can mix the brisket and short rib, but keep the chuck steak separate.

Season the meat with the salt. Place on a cake cooling rack set over a plate and leave uncovered in the fridge for 24–48 hours. This helps dry the meat, concentrating the flavour; the salt also reacts with the proteins in the meat, helping it to clump together.

A good few hours before you want to cook your burgers, chill your meat grinder and meat in the freezer for 30 minutes. (You want everything really cold as the meat will get hot during grinding.)

Using a large mincing dye, grind the brisket and short rib, along with the pork fat and any reserved beef fat.

Add the chuck steak to the mix, then go down a dye size and begin to mince. Keeping all the strands of meat in the same direction, stack them on top of each other, in a strand about 30 cm (12 inches) long. Wrap in plastic wrap, then gently push together to bind.

Now rest the meat in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Cut the meat into generous 3 cm (1 ¼ inch) slices. Fry in the rendered beef fat over medium–high heat for 2 minutes on each side to get a crust — you don’t want the meat completely cooked through.

Rest in a warm oven for a couple of minutes.

Top with caramelised onions and cheddar. Slap in a bun and top with sauce, commit and eat.

AWESOME SECRET TIP

The yeasted doughnut recipe makes a fabulous burger bun if you glaze it with a lightly beaten egg, sprinkle with sesame seeds and bake it in a hot oven for 10 minutes.

“This is definitely a commitment burger!”

“Be warned, the mix gets more volatile with time, and can serve some rough justice to family pests or rude customers alike.”