Thursday, January 13, 2011

Mushroom and Swiss Burgers, Garlic Fries

Day 8 of cooking from THE BEST OF COOKING LIGHT was a comfort food meal of burgers and fries (Mary, this meal's for you, being simple folk that we are!!!). They were good, but there's still a bit of a learning curve and adjustments that need to be made to recipes. Here's our take on these 2 dishes...

SMOTHERED BURGERS (Mushroom & Swiss Burgers as we called them), good burgers, but I used too much meat...

The recipe called for 1 lb of ground chuck, which you're supposed to use for 4 servings. I couldn't find ground chuck so used ground sirloin. The meat was good and really juicy. I made the mistake of thinking the 1 pound of meat I has was for 2 portions since I cut almost all the recipes down to 2 serving sizes, and only made 2 burgers out of the one pound of meat. They were really big burgers (of course, each burger was 1/2 pound). They took longer to cook, and were really big burgers. Not a problem with my hubby however, as he ate his entire burger. I ate half of mine and that was plenty. The meat is definitely meant for 4 servings, not 2. However, the burgers were really good and tasty, definitely ones we'd make again, with the right portion size.

GARLIC FRIES, good flavor, but were really overcooked...

We really liked the flavor of these fries, but the cooking time was much too long on these. The fries were cut shoestring size (1/4-inch-thick-strips), and were supposed to bake at 400 degrees for a total of 50 minutes, which was much too long. I think 35-40 minutes would have been more appropriate. I was distracted doing other things and didn't check the fries sooner, so they ended up getting way too overcooked and were very overdone. What we did like about these was the fact that they most definitely DO crisp up in the oven when they're baked. And after they're baked you toss them in a pan with a little butter, garlic, fresh parsley and Parmesan cheese. That really added a good flavor to them. I will definitely make these again, and watch the cooking time on them next time to make sure they don't burn. This is a keeper recipe.

18 recipes down, 529 more to go.

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