Kuma's Corner

If you're as much of a burger fanatic as I am, with an added obsession for all things heavy, who also spends far too much time on the internet, you'll no doubt have already heard of this mecca: Kuma's Corner.

picture taken from http://dawchicago.wordpress.com/

Kuma's is a bar and burger joint in Chicago, established in 2005, which I've had the most insane desire to visit since I first learned of it's existence a couple of years back. They have a great selection of both bottle and draft beers, mainly of the American craft beer variety, as well as a tiny kitchen which has a worldwide rep for cranking out the tastiest, most adventurous burgers you'll ever eat. They also blast metal constantly, the rules on their site on their site stating 'NO REQUESTS!'.
Yeah, it pretty much sounds like heaven.

Anyway, it's pretty much the only thing that could drag me all the way over to Chicago, and since I don't see that happening any time soon, I'm destined to live Kuma-less for the foreseeable future.

So I decided I'd take a little 'artistic inspiration' from their burger list, and create my own (no doubt inferior) versions of their burgs!

Here's the ingredients I picked up to create these monsters:

Incase some of those aren't immediately obvious, there's some chipotle sauce (which I have been trying to find in this country for what seems like forever!), BBQ sauce, a fresh salami, Swiss Emmental cheese, a big wedge of Gouda cheese, a clove of garlic, streaky bacon, and 500g of minced beef.

Kuma's uses pretzel rolls for their burgers, but since those aren't readily available here, and I was too goddamn tired and lazy to try making them from scratch, I settled on a freshly baked poppyseed roll and a couple of sesame bagels.

First step in creating the four different types of burgers is.... to create four different burger patties! No fuckin' duh, right?

This is where things branch off. I figured that since I would kill to try pretty much every burger on Kuma's menu, I should make as many of 'em as I could in one night!
I decided on making my own attempts at the YOB, Clutch, Mastodon and Goatwhore burgers.
The full menu can be found here http://www.kumascorner.com/food


YOB

To make the YOB burg, Kuma's uses

• Smoked Gouda
• Bacon
• Roasted red peppers
• Roasted garlic mayo

Chop your red pepper into strips rather than chunks, cut a pretty large chunk of gouda, and finely dice a single garlic clove to use in your mayonaisse.

So first step with this one was to fire the burger under the grill. I'm not used to cooking burgers in a non-barbeque context, so I was a little hesitant about grilling them indoors, not knowing how much time each patty might take, especially not since I'd made them about twice the size of my normal burgers.

Next I oiled up my frying pan, and threw in a coupla strips of streaked bacon, as well as my strips of pepper. Give it around 5 minutes to crisp up the bacon, then throw your diced garlic into a small corner (in a circular frying pan, yeah, I know) just to lightly brown it before mixing it into a paste in your mayo.

I checked on my burgs at this point and they were cooking much faster and much more evenly than I had expected for a grill, so I quickly cut a bagel in half and stuck it in the toaster. Once that popped, you basically just tower all the ingredients on top of one another, like so!

Admittedly, YOB aren't a band I've been into for long, I only got around to checking them out after hearing one of my favourite bands of recent times, Dark Castle, would be playing shows with them in the US. The limited amount of stuff I heard confirmed that this would be an ass-kicking tour that I will never see. So yeah, check out YOB, then check out Dark Castle too, for good measure.




CLUTCH

I was actually a little hesitant about making this, as Kuma's recipe calls for

• Cheddar
• Swiss
• Jack (which I assumed meant pepperjack)
• Smoked Gouda

Yep, that's FOUR cheeses right there. Given that one of my most hated foods in the world is four-cheese pizza (just WHY?! that's too much cheese, it's just dumb, fuck off with your four cheese pizza), I knew there was no way in hell I was making this with all four. There was the added factor that pepperjack cheese is nigh on impossible to find in my part of the world.

So I took a liberty with the 'Jack' aspect of the recipe and convinced myself they meant Daniels. Then I remembered I hate Jack Daniels, and opted to marinade my burger patty in the VASTLY superior Jim Beam.

This one is relatively simple in terms of prep work: marinade your patty in a liberal dose of Jim Beam for as long as it takes for you to chop slices of gouda, cheddar and swiss cheese, then fire your bourbon-y burger under the grill, and once it's cooked, stack it with cheese. Et voila!

The taste of this one was... a little strong for my liking. The Jim Beam marinade didnt really do a whole lot for the burger, it seemed to almost cancel out all the herbs and spices I added in to my minced meat, so it was a pretty bland patty, topped with 3 VERY domineering cheese flavours, all fighting for supremacy over my tastebuds. Overall taste was somehow simultaneously overwhelming AND underwhelming. Oh well, two more burgs to go!

Before that though, here's some vintage Clutch, one of my all-time favourite bands.



"Brown sugar, sweet potato
Sourmash, baby back
Redneck romance
Bless my soul!"


MASTODON

I was looking forward to trying this one as it involves BBQ sauce, something that I don't get to use anywhere NEAR as much as I'd like to.

Kuma's sez...

• BBQ Sauce
• Cheddar
• Bacon
• Frizzled onions

This is the closest to the type of burger that I usually make, so I was pretty confident I would be into it, there's no 'risky' ingredients or anything, just tried and true burger mainstays! I did however decide to marinade the patty in the BBQ sauce, rather than just cover the whole thing in a big dollop of it once it was cooked.

Burger: grill. Bacon: frying pan. Likewise for your onions. Once all of it is cooked, put it together. Easy as that.

This one went exactly as I expected: tasty as hell! The onions turned out slightly sweet, counterpointing the SERIOUSLY salty bacon. Also, the BBQ-marinaded patty was so juicy and just goddamn delicious. I would recommend this burger the most out of all the ones I made.

Major label record companies suck, we all know this, so as a result of them not wanting anyone to hear their artist's music, I can't embed my favourite Mastodon track....

I can however post a pretty excellent quality LIVE version! That guitar... hotdamn!




GOATWHORE

Last up, and yeah, least, is the Goatwhore burger.
This one didn't really get a fair shot, because after eating the other three GIGANTIC burgers and working my way through a couple of Sol beers as I cooked, I was way too full to eat this.
I promise I'll give it another shot, and give it the attention it no doubt deserves.

Kuma's ingredients for this surprisingly include to goat's cheese...

• Fried salami
• Provolone
• Giardiniera salad

For starters, provolone is IMPOSSIBLE to find in central Scotland. At least in all my usual deli haunts and the two major supermarket chains that I tried to find it in. So that was stricken from the list. Also, I wasn't ENTIRELY sure what a giardiniera salad actually was, it seemed to involved a whole lot of olives, and pickled cauliflower...? Either way, that was off too. I at least followed the 'salad' part and bought a few fresh leaves of lettuce.

So yeah, this one was super quick since all I had to do was lightly fry the salami and place it on top of the burger. Pretty boring, really.

Like I said, i really didn't give this one it's due, and couldn't even finish it when it sat there oh-so-pretty on my plate. I packed it up in tupperware, took it to work the next day and ate it cold for breakfast. Urgh. Not recommended.

Goatwhore are Celtic Frost-worshipping blackened thrash from the murky South, featuring guitarist Sammy Duet, who played in the phenomenal Acid Bath.



This blog was far from chronological, I actually prepared all four of these at the same time, and the insanity involved in trying to seperate the right ingredients to go with the relevant burger, shoot pics of before-and-after ingredients, and then find time to actually EAT the fuckers... goddamn, that was a frantic meal! All respect in the world to the chefs who actually prepare burgs all damn day in Kuma's.
Hopefully one day I'll make it for to Chicago and try the genuine article.

Grill 'em All!

For starters, I would like to apologise to the girl who partially inspired this post, since she's spent the weekend longing for barbeque food and steak.
So me, being the absolute prick that I am, decided 'hey, I know, I should totally have a barbeque and cook steak on it!'.

Disclaimers and apologies aside, I do genuinely LOVE barbeque season, which for me lasts pretty much from the first day there's still daylight past 7pm, pretty much up until the first snowfall of that winter. I think last summer I must've set some kind of record by attending barbeques for EVERY dinner for just over two weeks. Seriously, even if it was someone I didn't know who was hosting it, I got to know 'em pretty damn quick when I showed up at their home bearing dead animal parts and exotic sauces.
So I never pass on the opportunity to start fires outdoors, and tonight was my first of 2011.

It should go without saying that the first thing you do is fire up your grill. If you use firelighters, or that scooshy liquid shit, you should have your fucking FACE barbequed, you cheating motherfucker. Either charcoal ONLY, or use blocks of chopped wood, anything as close to 'natural' fire as you can get, because that other shit gives off an awful chemical odour, and will make your meat taste of deodorant. Fucking vomit.

So yeah, incase you're completely fucking numb in the brain, the most obvious choices for barbeque-ing are STEAK & BURGS! I usually come up with some extremely booze-sodden meat monstrosities, and tonight was no exception. I blew what little I had left of this weeks food budget on the biggest steaks I could find, and didn't think they should be sullied with just any old swill, I was gonna go all out for these babys:

Yep, any of you who actually read this sensory-serving, starvation-solving, solipsistic, salivation-inspiring soliloquys (yeah, I'm a pretentious, overly-verbose cunt, fight me about it) who know your bourbons will know that this shit just got SRS! Woodford Reserve will burn your throat and blacken your lungs, and is not for the faint-hearted. So I poured a pretty goddamn decent measure of it into the craters I carved on my steak.

I also figured I would (yet a-fucking-gain) make my own burgers. Insert previous blog entries about that process here. I did pull a Frankenstein and create some fuckin' MONSTERS tonight though!

So basically the prep work takes up all your time with barbequing, because once your meat is set to go, and your flames are licking your grill tray, all you gotta do is introduce them!

It's as easy as that, just keep a very careful eye on your steaks if you're like me and like 'em pretty much just bloody as all hell. When I bite into a steak, I want to hear that fucker moo. A figure about a minute for one side, and 30 second on the other is optimal, but if you're against mild bestial vampirism, cook it for a while longer. Pussy.

Yes, thats a strawberry milkshake, sofuckinwhat? There's enough bourbon soaked into the meat to get me nice and drunken. Drunk on carcass, life don't get much sweeter.

Just a short intoduction to a couple of guys you should already be familiar with if you're reading this blog, and thus probably already into metal and food, the awesome GRILL 'EM ALL foodtruck, out of Los Angeles, California. I can't tell you anything this video won't, but safe to say this truck is the ONLY reason I would ever visit Cali. Enjoy, and get salivating!

Carniwhore Burgers

Okay, okay, so I completely stole this recipe idea, at least certain elements of it. If you fancy a SRS recipe, not just my fast-as-fuck 'snack' version, you can get your drool on here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bookshark/sets/72157624856923391/

Now that my plagiarism has been exposed, I can get on with the usual bullshit. Heres what ya need:

Before I start, the only thing I didn't buy myself was the meat, because for some weird reason, we had... an entire slaughterhouse worth of minced beef in the fridge. I have no idea how much, weight-wise, I used, I just thrust my hand into the gigantic bowl of ungulate remains and pulled out a pawful.

I'm sure I've done a burger recipe before, so just... any prep involved in making burger patty, follow my old instructions. Be sure to use your hands to break up the meat and mix things into it, I can never stress that enough. Get bloody.

By now I'm goddamn sick of typing anything to do with chopping veg. Just fucking do it, right? Finely dice a red chilli if you fancy a dinner that's gonna kick your ass.
Also, cut off some pretty decent chunks of feta, for reasons that will become clear later/are already clear if you read the link above.

For something a bit weird, I decided it'd be a good idea to add a pretty serious amount of chilli powder, as well as powdered ginger, into my pattys. I know, ginger, I'm weird, I get it. It wasn't through any real desire to taste it in the burger (I couldn't in the end), just another excuse to experience the smell. Goddamn, that smell...

Anyway, where was I? So your meat is seasoned and mixed, your veg is chopped, your feta is primed.

Fire up your frying pan, splash in your oil, and seperate your meat into two decent sized pattys. Smash it flat with your fists, if you've had a particularly stressful day, or even if you haven't because pounding dead flesh is always fun. And surprisingly no, that's not a necrophilia joke, you sick fuck.

Once the meat is good and spread out, take your chunks of feta, place them on one side of the flattened patty and sprinkle in your red pepper and add in a fucktonne more chillis, powder and general spiciness, and fold the other side of the patty over on top of all of that, to seal it within. If you're worried the meat will just crumble and all your ingredients will spill out, lightly coat it with a mixture of a single whisked egg, milk and flour.

Lift these meaty beautys into your frying pan, and... well, just wait for 'em to fry, dumbass. They might take a little longer than your average burger because they're thicker, what with having 'layers' and all. So leave them in a good long while, and cut one through the middle to check it's all thoroughly cooked before serving.

The feta melts and gets all gorgeously gooey in the centre, it's honestly fucking amazing. I bought enough of it, and we have enough mince to ensure this is gonna be the only meal I eat for a week. Funnily enough, I am more than okay with that.

Since for once I didn't come up with my OWN clever post title, I'll settle for a clip vaguely related to it, in name alone.

Carnivore were a thrash band outta Brooklyn, featuring the late, great Peter Steele.
I know this is a food blog, but just listen to this track! The segue from all-out thrash, to the gloomy gothic doom mid-section, back through to thrash with an almost-crust-like vocal delivery... most bands still can't touch this prime late-80's stuff. RIP Pete.

Give Me Inconvenience or Give Me Death

I fucking hate fast food.

Everything about it, from every single purveyor of the stuff (except Taco Bell, but you don't get that over here anyway). The whole process of walking into the fluorescent box, surrounded by overweight spotty drones, squinting at the tiny text behind someone's head for 5 minutes, trying to work out which option is least likely to give you the shits. Then trying in vain to explain what you want, to the point of using sign language because the overweight spotty drone behind the counter sure as fuck doesn't speak English past the phrase 'next over here, please'. Within 30 seconds, your pre-made 'meal' is being handed to you shrink wrapped in glossy paper and cardboard, and your drink that is pretty much just flavoured ice is spewed out of the giant gurgling robot on the counter. You sit down at the crappy formica booth, trying not to vomit at the sound of all the other pigs snuffling away in their troughs, and attempt to force this (barely edible) cardboard nightmare down your gullet without the aid of any cutlery whatsoever. Now, to me, that sounds like fucking hell. I'd rather starve to death than eat M*******'s.

Safe to say, when I want a decent burger and fries, the process is anything but 'fast'. Occaisionally I get a craving for one so strong it upsets me, because there are NO decent burger places this side of Glasgow, so I usually end up just not eating. Today I actually stood up and audibly said "Fuck this!" and ran out the door with burgs on the brain, much to the surprise of my family.

Here are the ingredients I picked up:

You can pretty much see from the picture the list of ingredients, but the amount of minced beef there is about 1lb, and that makes enough burgs for two.

As usual, the first thing you want to do is slice, dice, dismember, disembowel, sever and generally destroy your vegetables.

Dice your red onions into the tiniest squares imaginable, and sprinkle them through your mince. Add salt, pepper and chilli flakes to taste, and mix it all up using your hands (shout out to Steff: MEAT MANICURES!). Set that aside for now, and get into those potatoes. Slice them into... let's say 8ths, so that they're more wedges than chips, really. Place those into a basin of water for about 10 minutes.

Now you can get back to the fun of playing with carcass! Yay! Grab a handful of your mince mixture, and round it off and pat it into a vaguely burgerly shape, really squash it together so it's good n' dense. You should get 4 pretty decent sized burgers out of that amount of mince.

Empty your potatoes out of the basin, and into a tea towl to dry them off a bit. Fire up your deep fat fryer, and fill it with oil to about halfway full. Once your tatties are dry and your oil is hissing, dump them into the wire basket, and slowly lower them in. You can basically just leave them alone for 10 minutes while they crisp up, and concentrate on your meat.

Get your burgers into a frying pan, and throw in a couple of slices of (preferably streaky) bacon if you have any space left. You're looking at maybe 3.5 minutes per side for the burgers, but don't take my word for it, always cut the biggest burg in half and make sure they're cooked through.

While that's all just cooking away, slice your cheese (I went for Canadian extra mature, mmm pungent!) along the long side, if that makes any sense? Basically the way that will give you a biiig surface area of cheese. If you're of a healthy disposition, rustle up a basic side salad, and get all your other toppings and condiments ready. When your chips are a beautiful golden brown, and your burgs and bacon are a crisp, meaty pile of deliciousness, well then you're done ain't ya? Put it all together and serve with a non-alchoholic beverage, because you're feeling pretty tender after last nights ridiculous intake of beers.