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Summary
Summary
A deep-dive into the art and philosophy of making the perfect hamburger, with recipes for game-changing burgers and all the accoutrements.
Chris Kronner has dedicated his creative energy, professional skills, and a lifetime of burger experiences to understanding America's favorite sandwich. In his debut cookbook, this trusted chef reveals the secrets behind his art and obsession, and teaches you how to create all of the elements of a perfect burger at home. Including tips for sourcing and grinding high-quality meat, musings on what makes a good bun, creative ideas for toppings (spoiler alert- there are more bad ideas out there than good, and restraint is the name of the game), and more than forty burger accompaniments and alternatives-from superior onion rings to seasonal salads to Filet-O-Fish-inspired Crab Burgers-this book is not only a burger bible, but also a meditation on creating perfection in simplicity.
Author Notes
CHRIS KRONNER took over the kitchen at Slow Club at the age of 24. He has worked at Serpentine and Bar Tartine, where he continued to hone his burger chops, and after a run of pop-ups he opened KronnerBurger in 2015. He and the restaurant have been praised by writers from Vice , Eater , Food & Wine , and Bon Appetit .
PAOLO LUCCHESI is the editor of the award-winning food and wine section at the San Francisco Chronicle and was a founding editor of Eater . He is the co-author of Flour + Water- Pasta and The Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream Book .
Reviews (1)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Once readers have made it through Kronner's lengthy introduction to this excellent collection of burger-and-sides recipes, they'll understand why the author's signature Kronnerburger (also the name of his popular Oakland restaurant) is a force to be reckoned with. Although Kronner offers up perfectly fine recipes for patty melts, pork, lamb, and veggie burgers, the showcase of the book is the Kronnerburger. A DIY labor of love from the ground up (he even makes his own buns), the umami-packed marriage of beef, charred onions, pickles, cheddar, mayonnaise, and roasted bone marrow is outstanding. Readers who take their burgers seriously would do well to note the sometimes time-consuming entries on cooking the perfect fries ("Kennebec potatoes that are fried at low temperature, frozen, and then fried at high temperature"), DIY dry-aging beef, and assembling a breakfast burger that is topped with bacon, pimiento cheese, and an egg custard patty (the recipe suggests making biscuits, pimiento cheese, and pickled cucumbers from scratch). Rounding out the collection are recipes for pickle-brined fried chicken, and two of his restaurant's other famous items, the rich and salty honey pie and a carbonated margarita. Backyard grillmasters eager to amp up their burger game will find that Kronner's debut lives up to its title. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Excerpts
Excerpts
PREAMBLE T here is no perfect. The hamburger is possibly America's most recognizable and representative food. What started as the most democratic, wholesome square meal meant to be consumed quickly for a fair price has mutated into forms unrecognizable to those original burger salesmen, not to mention the ranchers who raised the beef. Since the hamburger's creation, it has followed the revolutions and undulations of farming and economics in this country. Its path--and current forms--cannot be separated from the divergent systems of farming and animal rearing in the United States. On one extreme, there is the fast-food hamburger. Like the corporate industrial farms of which it is a product, it champions speed, quantity, and a price only achievable through subsidies and methods that compromise taste, animals, land, and the people involved in the systems that produce and consume it. On the other side is the well-intentioned, but often fetishized, higher-end product, which places importance on better values but struggles to make its product financially viable and accessible to the masses. I have eaten a thousand hamburgers. Hamburgers made of young beef, old beef, dry-aged beef, wet-aged beef, goose, wild boar, venison. Hamburgers made of A5 Kobe, water buffalo, plant-based "meat," brown bear (also made into burritos), elk, prosciutto. And hamburgers made of the crummiest, grayest, unidentifiably sad meat imaginable. I have eaten hamburgers in cars, restaurants, backyards, ballparks, and the woods; on trains and boats; at the movies and the entrance to Machu Picchu; in Denver, Atlanta, Asheville, Seattle, Portland, Nashville, New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Detroit, London, Paris, Beirut, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Vancouver, Montevideo, Mexico City, Lyon, Tokyo; and everywhere in between. I have cooked close to a billion hamburgers, mostly in restaurants, many at home, on grills, in microwaves, in alleys, in a couple of museums, on rooftops, in art galleries, in parking lots, and in fields next to said hamburger's still-grazing brethren. I have looked a cow in its eyes before putting a bullet between them. I have seen cows birthed and watched them die. What is presented in the following pages is the result of a lot of burger cooking and burger eating. With this book, I originally set out with very specific intentions, to write about the ONE way to make ONE burger using ONE very specific type of beef only. That was dumb. I am dumb. What I found, as Paolo and I dove deeper, is that there are many ways to make a better burger, in the choices you make both in your purchases and preparations. Before and during the process of writing of this book, I tried as many types of beef as possible. I also explored as many variations of burger cooking as possible. I have talked burgers and beef with meat salespeople, burger eaters, fancy chefs, line cooks, and beef ranchers of many stripes. We very likely missed some points of view and more than a few closely guarded burger secrets. Maybe your dad cooks burgers over an old, abandoned well full of smoldering tires and lit fireworks. Maybe your grandmother swears by a burger ratio of 80 percent beef, 5 percent French onion soup mix, and 15 percent lean hawk meat. I fully respect your hamburger traditions. The beef that I find to be best, in my home of Northern California, may not be available to you. Depending on where you live and cook, use the best of what is available, the ingredients you like the most. If you have access to lovingly raised animals that you can see from your driveway, you are very lucky. If you have the ability to dry-age beef and bake bread, you are very lucky. If you can't go shake hands with the steer you eat and don't have desire or space to slowly dry-age your meat, don't worry, because we have useful burger information for every level of interest and devotion. There is no "perfect," but there is bad. Bad should be avoided if possible. (Trust me on this one.) I have watched hamburgers be eaten by the very young and very old, by cowboys and vegans, by beautiful women and equally beautiful boys, mostly resulting in smiles and elation, occasionally total revulsion. Which hamburger was the best? Almost all of them. You have eaten hamburgers, too. At least one. You may have even enjoyed it. What did it taste like? This book is for you. Excerpted from A Burger to Believe In: Recipes and Fundamentals by Chris Kronner, Paolo Lucchesi All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Foreword | p. 6 |
Preamble | p. 10 |
1 Cows and Beef and Burgers | p. 23 |
2 The Kronnerburger | p. 57 |
Pain de Mie Bun (aka Official Kronnerburger Bun) | p. 62 |
Dill Pickles | p. 64 |
Charred Onion | p. 65 |
Cheddar Mayonnaise | p. 65 |
Roasted Bone Marrow | p. 66 |
Tomato | p. 66 |
Lettuce | p. 66 |
Kronnerburger: A Burger to Believe In | p. 71 |
3 Other Burgers | p. 73 |
Patty Melt | p. 74 |
Otherburger (Served Not Rare) | p. 77 |
Earth Burger | p. 82 |
Breakfast Burger | p. 87 |
Crab Burger | p. 88 |
Fried Crab Burger | p. 90 |
Slow Club Burger | p. 94 |
Bar Tartine Burger | p. 99 |
Pickle-Brined Fried Chicken | p. 100 |
Pork Burger | p. 102 |
Lamb Burger | p. 104 |
Shrimp Burger | p. 106 |
Hand-Cut Burger | p. 108 |
Rawburger (Served Raw) | p. 111 |
4 Burger Sides | p. 113 |
Onion Rings | p. 114 |
French Fries | p. 118 |
Steak Fries | p. 124 |
Potato Chips | p. 125 |
Sweet Potato Tots | p. 126 |
French Fry Pavé | p. 127 |
Gluten Freedom Fries with Freedom Gravy (aka Poutine) | p. 128 |
Vegan Chili-Cheese Fries | p. 130 |
Tartare | p. 132 |
Crab Dip | p. 133 |
Pimento Cheese | p. 135 |
Mushroom Dip | p. 136 |
Chicken Wings Salad | p. 137 |
A Cool Recipe for Hot Chicken | p. 140 |
Grilled Chicken Wings | p. 143 |
Grilled Vegetables | p. 144 |
Padróns | p. 146 |
5 Salads | p. 149 |
Wedge Salad | p. 150 |
Grilled Cabbage with Grapefruit | p. 153 |
Tomato and Oyster Salad | p. 154 |
A Perfectly Simple Chicory Salad | p. 157 |
Vegan Chopped Salad | p. 158 |
Okra and Mushroom Salad | p. 164 |
Radish and Stone Fruit Caesar Salad | p. 167 |
Tuna Salad | p. 168 |
Louie Salad (aka Sea Salad) | p. 170 |
Perfect Eggs | p. 173 |
Avocado and Crispy Rice | p. 174 |
Winter Vegetable Salad | p. 176 |
Kale Salads Are Over | p. 179 |
Smoky Potato Salad | p. 180 |
Bean Salad | p. 183 |
Cauliflower and Fava Salad | p. 184 |
6 Drinks | p. 187 |
Alcoholic Drinks | |
KB Carbonated Margarita | p. 190 |
Dandy | p. 190 |
KB Martini | p. 191 |
Sunshine Sour | p. 191 |
Falling and Laughing | p. 192 |
Wanderlust | p. 192 |
Black Sun | p. 193 |
Cloud 29 | p. 193 |
Non-Alcoholic Drinks | |
Lemonade | p. 198 |
Cucumber Cilantro Cooler | p. 198 |
Orange Cream Soda | p. 198 |
Ginger Turmeric Soda | p. 199 |
Strawberry Mint Lime Soda | p. 199 |
7 Desserts | p. 201 |
Honey Pie | p. 202 |
Devil's Food Cake | p. 205 |
Doughnut Muffins | p. 208 |
Passion Fruit Bars | p. 210 |
Fruit Salad | p. 210 |
Bacon-Fat Blondies | p. 212 |
Vegan Coconut Sorbet | p. 213 |
8 Condiments and Burge Pantry | p. 215 |
Basic Mayo | p. 216 |
Calabrian Chile Mayonnaise | p. 216 |
Vegan "Cheddar" Mayonnaise | p. 217 |
Quick Mushroom Dip | p. 218 |
Tofu Mayo | p. 218 |
Aioli | p. 219 |
Ranch Dressing | p. 219 |
Tartar Sauce | p. 220 |
Yuba Bacon | p. 220 |
American Cheese | p. 221 |
Chile Oil | p. 221 |
Quick Pickled Chiles | p. 223 |
Bread and Butter Pickles | p. 223 |
Lacto-Fermented Pickles | p. 224 |
Chad's Sourdough Leaven | p. 225 |
Brioche Bun | p. 226 |
Vegan Bun | p. 227 |
Gluten-Free Bun | p. 229 |
Biscuits | p. 230 |
Pullman Loaf Levain | p. 231 |
Acknowledgments | p. 234 |
Index | p. 236 |