The heat reached 96 degrees in Portland yesterday. I wasn’t built for this sort of thing, I tell you. I knew I’d have to prepare something cold for lunch, but I also had a bit of a salty tooth, as I usually do. Cold food usually covers the creamy and sweet parts of the flavor spectrum; what about salty, spicy, and pungent?

Presenting: cold sesame noodles with fried anchovies.

We will need the following ingredients, which are discussed in more detail after the list:

• Soba noodles
• Toasted sesame oil
• Sesame seeds
• Soy sauce
• Rice vinegar
• Fish sauce
• Dried anchovies

You’ll notice I’m skipping measurements; they make no more sense here than in, say, salad dressing. Start with what looks right, don’t add too much of anything, and since there’s no cooking involved in the sauce, you can always correct as you mix. The liquids in my list are probably sorted from highest to lowest amount, but please, follow your own stomach.

If you don’t stock any of these items, it’s time to make a trip to your local Asian market. These are all rewarding ingredients with a long shelf life. Speaking of which: store your sesame oil in the fridge. Precious oils (like hazelnut oil or truffle oil) will lose their punch quickly if left in the pantry.

You can buy toasted sesame seeds, but toasting your own isn’t rocket surgery: nonstick pan over medium heat for a minute or two until they’re fragrant and hazelnut-colored (but not dark brown.)

The rice vinegar and the fish sauce are optional, but you’ll be breaking my heart if you skip them.

As for those anchovies… Fine, they’re not totally crucial, and most places won’t top their noodles with them. Most places don’t serve the best cold sesame noodles ever. If you’re vegetarian, I get it. If you eat fish otherwise, it’s time to acquaint yourself with one of the world’s greatest under-appreciated flavors. 

In this case, we’ll be using Thai dried anchovies. Your Asian market will definitely have them; look for bags near all the other dried foods. There are myriad brands; here’s how to spot the good ones: the fish should be about 3” in length, whole, and shiny. Avoid broken fish and anything with “dust”, either at the bottom of the bag or on the fishies themselves. Think of it as cereal - you want solid pieces.

Start cooking by frying the anchovies, brave soul: in a small pan, heat canola or peanut oil over medium-high heat; drop in the fish, cover, and spoon them out onto a paper-towel-lined plate in a minute or so. They should look darker and crisper, but not burned. 

While that’s going, boil your noodle water and cook the soba for about 4 minutes, or whatever the package instructs you to do. Then do the thing you never want to do with hot pasta: rinse the noodles with very cold water, moving them so they don’t stick. Immediately toss them in a large bowl (no, seriously, a very large bowl) with all the liquid ingredients. As you do that, throw in the toasted sesame seeds. Season with furikake or shichimi togarashi, garnish with green onions and the anchovies.

This recipe has meandered a bit, so to recap: toast the sesame, mix the wet ingredients in a bowl, fry the fish, boil the noodles. Enjoy on the porch or in front of a fan. Happy summer!

Like, I suspect, a number of foodish types, I’ve tended to be a bit dismissive of food allergies. I’d hear reports of school-wide peanut butter bans and unapologetic parents canceling play dates because there was milk in the house and roll my eyes. I’ve been tempering this attitude, though, as I discover that a number of my friends and people I care about bring their own food allergies to the table, often without me even knowing it.

My buddy Ross, one of the most badass guys I know, takes a lactase pill before we go out for pizza so the cheese doesn’t bring about the extreme discomfort of lactose intolerance. My friend Briana has a much more severe anaphylactic reaction to dairy, where even a soy latte that’s been prepped with a spoon that previously touched cream sends her to the emergency room.

And then there are my friends John and Amy Jane, whose boy Jonas is one of the most awesome six-year-olds you’ll ever meet. The kid loves superheroes and will fight you in a duel to the death in imagined gunfights, provided you’re willing to run through the muggy streets of Philadelphia to do it. He’s got a quick wit, as you’d expect if you know his folks, and a fearless attitude. The only thing that keeps him from being an otherwise normal kid, and what keeps his parents a little more on edge than most, is his severe dairy allergy. Amy Jane is raising money for the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network and wrote a funny and moving piece about her son. Even if you can’t contribute to her goal, I hope you’ll give it a read.

Food allergies are a bit mysterious. They are often caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors that lead to the body rejecting, sometimes violently, the very things we put in to nourish it. They can be caused by the introduction of new foods at a very young age — milk, eggs and nuts before the age of one can lead to allergic reactions. Sometimes they linger for life, sometimes they disappear after childhood, sometimes they show up in adults.

They can be caused by the crapshoot of genetics and how well you picked your ancient ancestors. The ability to produce lactase, the enzyme that breaks down the lactose sugar found in milk, is actually the exception, not the rule, in human adults. Scandinavians and most northern Europeans do ok with dairy, but those numbers drop as you go south; people of African descent are more than twice as likely to be lactose intolerant than tolerant. ¹

We seem to hear a lot more about food allergies these days than ever before and that, too, is mysterious. It may be that we’re better at spotting them, it may be that we as a species haven’t caught up to globalization, it may be that there’s something about our modern approach to diet and food production that is causing a noticeable uptick in food-related allergies. Like other modern afflictions, though, food allergies suffer from a lack of understanding and awareness. I hope you’ll consider supporting my friend Amy Jane as she tries to raise a little money but more importantly awareness about her awesome son and his decidedly unawesome allergies.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I make pretty decent pie dough; not because it impugns my manhood but because from-scratch pie crusts, especially flaky pie crusts, are supposed to be difficult. You’ve probably heard about tricks like using vodka or other such sorcery but I’ve always had luck with just the basics. I really wish I had a trick of my own to impart.

Before we get started, let’s consider briefly just what pie dough is. Like its cousin the biscuit, pie dough is a means to suspend fat in flour, the primary difference being that a pie dough uses much less liquid. The type of fat can vary depending on the type of pie. I prefer crusts made with just butter, not lard or shortening ¹. Also like the biscuit, the fat is cut into the flour, usually using a pastry cutter (I prefer blades to wires on my pastry cutters as they are sturdy enough to stand up to well-chilled butter) so that larger pieces of butter will help ensure a flaky crust. A little salt and some cold water are all you need to round out the recipe.

One word about butter — get the good stuff. I like a full fat, European-style butter like Plugra for my pie dough. As with all baking, use unsalted butter and add the right amount of salt on your own.

Most pies call for two crusts and it’s easy enough to make two at once. I use Michael Ruhlman’s 3-2-1 ratio of three parts flour, two parts fat (butter) and one part liquid (ice water) for it’s simplicity. This works out to 12 ounces of all purpose flour weighed out (about 2 1/2 cups if you don’t have a scale), 8 ounces of butter (two sticks or one bullion of Plugra exactly, as luck would have it) and 4 ounces (a few tablespoons) of ice water.

My one piece of advice when you are ready to prepare: stay cool, and I mean this literally and figuratively. Butter has a pretty low melt point; it will start to pool on a warm enough day, not to mention in a hot kitchen. You want the butter to remain solid until bake time, otherwise the melted butter will mix with the flour and your pie crust will be more mealy than flaky ². It’s important to work quickly but not frantically.

Cut the butter into about half inch cubes then chill it in the freezer for 15 minutes or so. Measure out the flour, add half a teaspoon of salt, stir twice, then chill in the fridge along with your pastry cutter. This sounds obsessive, I realize, but it really does help.

When everything is chilled, work the butter into the flour with a pastry cutter until the pieces are roughly pea-sized. You’ll probably need to use a knife to scrape the butter from between the blades of the pastry cutter.

Add ice water by the tablespoon until the dough just comes together. Water in this recipe really is the biggest unknown because the amount of water you need will vary depending on the flour you’re using and, yes, even how humid it is on any particular day. Err on the side of less water, just make sure it’s ice cold.

Dump the dough, likely still crumbs, on a floured surface and quickly knead by hand for 30 seconds or less to bring it all together. At this point, the dough should be cool to the touch and you want to work quickly to keep the heat of your hands from melting the butter. Three or four good kneads should be sufficient. If it won’t stay together, dump the crumbs back in the bowl, add a little more water then try again.

Divide the dough in half and shape into discs that are about half an inch thick. Wrap each disc in plastic and refrigerate for at least half an hour or up to a day. The refrigeration gives the butter a chance to cool and solidify, and the time allows the water to evenly distribute in the dough.

When it comes time to make a pie, remember to keep temperature in mind. Were your dough discs in the fridge overnight? They may need to sit on the counter for a few minutes before rolling them out so that they’re not too hard. Is it a hot day in a hot kitchen? Roll each disc quickly and then wrap in plastic and store in the fridge while assembling the rest of the pie.

Now that you’ve made your own pie crust, making the pie should be, well, easy.

1. If I’m making a savory pie, like one filled with meat, I’ll sub about 1/3 of the butter with lard or, best yet, duck fat. ↩

2. Unlike, say, mealy apples, mealy crust isn’t necessarily a bad thing and is delicious in its own right. The difference is really one of texture. ↩

We’re right in the middle of fava bean season here in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s a recipe to enjoy for the next few weeks and hopefully greet these guys with next year.

When shopping for fava beans, look for decent-sized pods with thick, solid peas. While you can sometimes buy shelled favas, it’s probably not worth the extra cost; I find shelling easy and fun anyway.

But I’m getting head of myself. Here’s what we’ll be making: fava bean soup with morel mushrooms and carrot cream.

For the soup, we will need:

• 1 cup shelled fava beans, skin removed
• 1 medium gold potato, cubed
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
• 1 small stalk celery, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup morel mushrooms, sliced, divided in half
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 1/2 cup stock, chicken or veggie
• 1/4 cup heavy cream

And for the cream:

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 tbsp sour cream
• 1 medium carrot, shredded or grated
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp salt

It’s hard to estimate how much favas you’ll need in pods to yield 1 cup shelled beans - maybe 1 to 2 lb? Buy more and I’m sure you’ll have no problem using up the leftovers. If you can’t find morel mushrooms, substitute whatever ones you can find.

We’ll start by preparing the beans. Shell them by breaking the pod and removing the white-coated beans. This should be fun, especially since the inside of fava pods feels like a fuzzy Muppet. Do it over a bag and it won’t take a minute.

You’re still not looking at the beans, though. The white wax coating is edible but not tasty; you’ll want to remove it. Do this by boiling the beans for 3 minutes, until they’re a bit softer. Run them under cold water in a strainer so they’re cool enough to handle. They’ll also shrivel a little, making it easier to pierce the coating with your fingernails (or a knife) and extract the wonderfully green beans inside. This might take a few minutes - employ a child or a loved one while you dice up the rest.

Let’s get cooking: melt 3 tbsp of butter over medium-high heat in a medium-sized pot. Add the onion, carrot, and celery. Cook for 2-3 minutes, then add the potato. Stir for another 3 minutes, then add the beans and half the mushrooms.

The water should be evaporating pretty quickly now so hit the pot with the wine and stir to make sure nothing’s sticking to the bottom. When most of the wine cooks off, add the stock, stir, cover, and drop the heat to low. Keep it there for 20-30 minutes, adjusting the heat as needed. The soup should bubble lively but not violently. Turn off the heat when the potatoes are soft. 

While the soup is cooking, combine all the cream ingredients except sour cream and refrigerate. When the soup is done and cooling off, strain the cream mix into a large bowl, pressing to extract as much carrot juice as you can. Add the sour cream and whip this into a stiff cream; an immersion blender with a whisk attachment works great - I like the Braun model.

It’s double handy because you’ll also need it in the next step: pureeing the soup. Immersion blenders are awesome because they let you liquify your soup right in the pot, piping hot. If you only have a regular blender, do NOT attempt to blend hot soup; wait until it cools off. Either way, puree the soup well and strain it. Straining is not strictly necessary, but it makes a difference between a diner soup and a wedding-anniversary-restaurant soup. Add the 1/4 cup of cream, season with salt and pepper, and stir one last time.

In a small pan, quickly fry the remaining mushroom slices in olive oil. When they’re done, add more oil and fry some baguette slices.

Serve by topping the soup with a dollop of carrot cream, a few fried mushroom slices, maybe some chopped chives and a drop or two of truffle oil.

Jim has already written a fine post on traditional, all-American burgers; I won’t mess with his wisdom on his homeland’s favorite summer lunch. Instead, I will tell you about mine.

I grew up on the border of Croatia and Bosnia, in a region whose culinary weapons are onion, pork fat, and paprika. If you can fry one in the other and dust it with the third, you’re golden. It’s beautiful country in the summer - Oregon reminds me of it, in that you get three months of fantastic weather and spend the other nine waiting for three more. And in those tanning days, you better invite friends over on the weekend and serve them one of these.

It’s basically a spicy patty topped with sour cream, served on a softened roll and accompanied with raw green onions. Are you still reading? Good - let’s break it down!

• 1/8 lb ground pork and 1/8 lb ground beef (or, in my case, 1/4 lb ground turkey)
• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• Paprika and cayenne pepper
• Salt and black pepper
• 1 ciabatta roll, sliced in half
• 1/4 cup stock (chicken, vegetable, turkey, what have you)
• 2 tbsp sour cream
• 4-5 thin slices of onion, white or yellow
• 2-3 green onions, fresh and crisp

In a plastic bowl - larger than you think, as is always the case with bowls - mix the meat with the garlic, and season with the hot stuff as you see fit. This should be fairly spicy in that dry, peppery way - don’t introduce any acid by the way of hot sauce. You’ll be cutting the heat with the cream, so live a little.

Press the patty into shape on a large piece of plastic wrap. Go thinner than you would with a typical burger - I don’t recommend you go rare here. We’re shooting for more of a meatball-type muscle to the patty. That said, make sure it all stays together.

Heat your grill, griddle, or frying pan, and get everything oiled enough to minimize sticking - follow Jim’s instructions in the above-linked burger post. If you’re cooking on a solid surface (not a grill grate) and you’d like to try the unorthodox Shake Shack method, press the patty down and let it caramelize on one side before scraping it off with a sharp metal spatula and giving the other side the same treatment. This will result in a “smashed” texture and a burger that’s crispy on the outside. 

Meanwhile, grab a strip of aluminum foil. You’ll build a makeshift rack by twisting the foil into a rope and then coiling it into a ring. Place this in a small saucepot and add enough stock to cover the bottom, but no more than half the height of the rack.

Heat the stock over medium heat; don’t boil it, just get it steaming a bit.Place one half of the ciabatta roll, cut side down, on the rack, so it gets steamed by doesn’t sit in the stock. Place the other half of the roll on it, cut side up. Cover the pot so you get a nice steam room going. This will turn the dry ciabatta into a spongy bun - it’s not a texture you get in regular burger buns.

After about a minute of steaming, remove the roll and the rack from the stock. Dip the cut side of each slice of the bread into the stock, brush it with oil, and place it on the grill. This will add lots of flavor and also remove much of the water from the outside of it. Again, it’s a texture all its own.

Time to assemble: when the burger is done - medium-well, I recommend - place it on the bun and top it with the sour cream. Spread the cream on the patty with the back of a spoon; you should see it melt a little. Top with onion slices. Add more cayenne if that’s your thing.

On the side, you’d serve freshly washed green onions with a little mound of salt. Dip the onion in the salt - just a little! - and crunch away. Weird? Yeah, but - it’s crispy, hot, and salty! Sort of like potato chips, right?

We never called this a “burger” when I was a kid. I’m not sure you’d call it one either. But the great thing about food is, your taste buds shouldn’t care who calls it what - I just hope they like it!

At the store this weekend, I counted no fewer than a dozen different varieties of pre-packaged pancake mixes. And this was a fancy, highfalutin store that doesn’t even bother to stock the aerosol or otherwise weaponized shake-and-pour varieties. What’s the lesson here? That pancakes are hard; here, gentle consumers who are far too busy to bother making from scratch, just add water.

Pancakes are not hard. As long as you have the right ingredients on hand, making them from scratch requires no more effort than measuring from a box.

The basics are these: flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, milk, eggs, butter. You should be stocking your larder with these already and if you don’t have these basics on hand, pick them up next time you hit the store. The batter is pretty much equal parts wet and dry, which you’ll want to mix separately and then combine until the batter just comes together. The biggest mistake novice pancake makers make is to over-mix the batter. Two final tips: let the batter rest for at least five minutes before spooning it out, and let your griddle cool a little between batches.

Here’s a recipe for pancakes for two people. It’s easy to double, triple or quadruple depending on your needs.

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 three finger pinch salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 3/4 - 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
• Some more butter for the pan

Set your oven to its lowest temperature so you have somewhere to store your finished cakes while making the rest. No one likes cold pancakes.

Melt the butter (30 seconds on a medium setting in the microwave is about right) and let it start to cool. Combine the dry ingredients in a good sized bowl and stir a few times to distribute. In a separate bowl, beat the egg into the milk with a fork, then add the melted butter. Start with a little less milk; you can always add more if the batter is too thick.

By mixing the wet and dry ingredients separately, you make sure that the wet ingredients are mixed properly without overworking the batter. Now, combine the wet ingredients with the dry and mix until the batter just comes together — don’t over mix, it’s ok if the batter is still lumpy.

While the batter is resting, heat your griddle on medium heat. I like to use a flat griddle for pancakes instead of a pan with sides, it’s easier to get to them with a spatula. Cast iron is a fine, economical choice, and one that spans two burners on your stove will keep a big crowd happy.

Add a fair amount of butter to the griddle, which will add to the flavor and keep the cakes from sticking. When the butter is foaming, ladle some batter onto the griddle, usually between a third and half a cup’s worth. Try to make them all about the same size so that they cook at the same time. In about two to three minutes, you should start to see bubbles forming on the top. A minute more and those bubbles will pop, meaning it’s time to flip. Don’t get fancy, just flip them with a spatula and let them cook another two to three minutes. Stack them on a cookie sheet and store in the warm oven while you cook the rest.

Wipe out any butter between rounds with a paper towel to avoid cooking in burned butter and let the pan cool down for a minute before the next batch.

Pancake batter is wonderful because it’s so variable. You can replace half the flour with whole wheat flour or other grains like cooked cornmeal or whole oats. You can stir in a little spice like cinnamon or add fresh blueberries or thinly sliced bananas once you ladle the batter but before you flip the cakes. Try separating the egg(s), beat the yolks as usual then whip the whites with a handmixer and fold them into the combined batter. Zest some lemon or orange peel into the batter to brighten it up. You can even add chocolate chips if you’re feeling indulgent.

You know what to serve this with already — warm maple syrup, melted butter, three slices of thick bacon or sausage links, some fresh fruit and cold orange juice.

Sometimes even a sandwich can get pretty complicated. And sometimes a “complicated” recipe won’t have you searching for scores of obscure ingredients or washing countless bowls. Sometimes it’s just that a “sandwich” typically means a fresh stack of things between slices of bread, and the atypical is a bit more involved, but surprisingly tasty.

This is an overnight sandwich. Make it if you find yourself with the right ingredients and a spare minute at 10 PM one night.

You will need:

• A “medium-soft” baguette
• Smoked turkey, sliced
• Brie cheese, sliced
• Cucumber
• Salt, flakes if possible
• Crème fraiche (optional)

Let’s break down the ingredients. I’ll cover the turkey last.

By “medium-soft” baguette I mean, not super-fluffy and not super-rustic either. The bread should give when you squeeze, but it shouldn’t collapse. 

I prefer English cucumbers for raw preparations. Why? Well, they’re nearly seedless, and they’re unwaxed. Instead of wax, they’re wrapped in plastic. This is not entirely wasteful packaging - unless your cucumbers are grown very locally, they’ll lose moisture quickly if they’re not sealed in some way. 

Now, the turkey. The most convenient sandwich turkey is, well, sandwich turkey - those huge, pale, dry slices of baked breast that adorn every supermarket’s fridge across from the deli. I buy this stuff often - it’s not bad. But you know what’s better? Smoked turkey.

More precisely, whole, unsliced turkey drumstick and thigh. This is where things get downright prosciuttal (you know, like prosciutto.) Where breast meat is predictably inoffensive, thigh meat is fatty and juicy, with loads of texture and flavor. Slice it yourself, and use the remaining bone in soup or stock.

You should be able to find smoked turkey at a good butcher or deli; around here, Whole Foods carries the Diestel brand. I hate to be a tease about this, but I actually used home-cured turkey made by my dad. He cold-smokes it, a bit on the rare side (which I should point out is probably not cool with the FDA, but my stomach has never complained.) I’d love to share a recipe for this, but it involves a custom-built smoker, so, maybe some other time. Take it as a suggestion to befriend a knowledgeable butcher! 

Whatever turkey you end up with, this should make at least a very good sandwich. Follow these easy directions:

Slice the bread and salt one side just a bit. Top with cheese. Top with cucumber. Top with turkey. Close.

Simple, huh? So let’s add some complications and clarifications:

Depending on how salty your turkey is, you may or may not need to add salt. If you do add it, the reason it goes on the bread (!) is because otherwise, it would either touch the cucumber (which would then release water) or the already salty turkey.

The cucumber goes in the middle so it’s bookended by two soft layers, which will minimize sliding. Nobody likes a poorly structured sandwich.

If you went with pre-sliced turkey, or whatever else you got is on the dry side, top it with a bit of crème fraiche. If you don’t have crème fraiche (who does, on a normal day?) you’ll still be ok.

Now wrap the whole thing tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate it. I mean, you don’t have to do this, but if you’ve trusted me this far, trust me another eight hours: the flavors will blend beautifully, resulting in a sandwich that tastes prepared more than assembled. Before enjoying, let it sit out of the fridge for 10-20 minutes, then serve with slices of tart apple and a glass of light white wine. 

This is another recipe inspired by a Portland food cart - this time, Addy’s. They’re friendly, quick, and they take credit cards. Now, I mean no insult to Addy when I say that I prefer my version. It’s just that not everyone has a dad who’ll send them home from Florida with a backpack full of freshly cured and smoked poultry.

Memorial Day kicked off the unofficial start of grilling season here in the US of A, which no doubt means many of you are going to be pattying up some hamburgers over the next few months. A good burger is a thing to take pride in and a little extra attention will help get it just right.

(photo courtesy of SeoulBrother)

Start with the meat. We usually experience ground beef encased in styrofoam and cellophane wrapping, which introduces a whole host of problems. Unless the cut is specified (usually “ground chuck”), this beef comes from the trimmings of other cuts and is bound to be inconsistent. Pre-wrapped beef is labeled as “lean” or “extra lean”, meaning a fat content of around 9-12%, but a good burger should be more in the 15-20% fat range.

More worrisome than a dry burger, though, is the rare though very serious concern about e. coli. This nasty bug is a common cause of food poisoning and made more prevalent by mass-produced meat ground up who-knows-where. E. coli is a bacteria that lives on the surface of meat, and since grinding steak trimmings into burger increases the amount of surface area exponentially, it makes sense to make sure your meat is ground safely and not before being loaded into a truck and driven all over creation.

The easiest way to do that is to ask your butcher to grind it for you, which they’re usually happy to do. But what kind of meat should you grind? Traditionally, chuck roast makes good hamburger with the right balance of meat and fat and a flavor you’ll recognize. If you want a meatier burger, go for a steak like a sirloin, though it’ll be a little less fatty and therefore drier.

I’ve been experimenting with a mixed approach, combining about 50% chuck with 25% brisket and short rib for a rich, meaty burger (I stole the mixed meat idea from New York butcher Pat LaFrieda, who sells bespoke burger mixes to places like the storied Shake Shack). Traditionalists will insist on beef burgers, but lamb, pork, turkey and even duck are fantastic ground and grilled — the Lunchbox Laboratory here in Seattle sells duck/pork burger called The Dork that calls to my nerdy heart.

If you’re feeling particularly DIY, there’s nothing stopping you from grinding the meat yourself. Don’t have a meat grinder? A food processor will work just fine if you cut your meat into 1-inch cubes and pulse instead of letting it run full tilt. A few one-second pulses should be plenty; you’re not making pâté. The result will be different than what you’re used to - more chopped than ground - but it will patty up just fine and no one will know the difference once they take a bite.

I like to season mine with nothing more than kosher salt and pepper, and I like to do it before I form the patties. I usually sprinkle enough salt to dust the top, add a few fine grinds of pepper, then mix gently with my hands and repeat one more time. You are more than welcome to add any variety of seasonings, such as ketchup and mustard, an egg, chili powder, fresh herbs, onions, or worcestershire sauce, though too much and your burger starts to resemble meat loaf. When I’m using good quality meat, freshly ground, I like to let it stand on its own.

Then there’s the pattying. It’s important to try to make sure each burger is about the same size so that they’ll all cook equally. Six ounces per burger is usually perfect, though eight ounces is a little easier to measure out by sight — two burgers for every pound of meat. (A scale is really handy here.) Once the meat’s measured, it’s important not to work it too much and certainly don’t press it into something resembling a pancake or one of those frozen pucks that fast food joints use. The meat should just hold together with the final patty about 3/4 of an inch thick.

Here’s a trick that will make you the star of the grill — put a dimple in the middle of your patty. Just press your thumb about a quarter of the way into the top of your burgers and reshape as necessary. This will keep your burgers from ending up like little UFOs as they cook ¹.

Medium high heat is just about perfect for burgers — for charcoal, start the coals in a chimney, let them burn until they’re dusted in gray ash, then spread an even layer in your grill. You should be able to hold your hand over the grill for 2-3 seconds. Let the burgers cook for 3-4 minutes, then flip and cook for another 4-5 minutes for medium rare. I find that only flipping once reduces the number of flare ups and keeps the burgers moist and flavorful. Whatever you do, do not press down on the burger with your spatula.

If you like cheese on your burger (who doesn’t?) add it in the last 30 seconds so it just melts. If you can keep your swarming guests at bay, let the burgers rest for a few minutes before digging in. Toast the rolls right on the grill for 30 seconds to keep them from turning to mush.

Condiments are up to you. Here again, I prefer to keep it simple — a thick slice of red onion that’s been grilled for a few minutes to cut back the bite, heirloom tomatoes when in season, crisp butter lettuce or fresh-from-the-window-box arugula for a little more spice, crunchy pickles and a smear of dijon. I’m told some even add ketchup or bottled barbecue sauce but you’re no doubt above such philistinism. You know what to drink with this: a cold beer, preferably from a cooler, fetched by someone who appreciates how much smoke your eyes have endured.

Neven’s Notes:

Jim’s advice is right on the money here. Regarding that thing where people press the burger into the grill - you’ve seen this in movies, now please unsee it. Pressing will merely dry out your burger and make it likelier to stick; it certainly won’t make it cook any faster. Putting down the grill cover will do that. If your grill has a built-in thermometer, you can check this - opening it constantly is the fastest way to lose heat (which, I should add, is not always a bad thing.)

As for the bun, the traditional view is that the perfect hamburger bun stays fluffy until the moment you press it with your fingers, at which point it should deflate into an easily mouthable flat with all the flavor of its formerly tall self. Supermarket buns usually aren’t great, but their spongy softness is a desirable feature. If your particular burger fits a ciabatta roll, go for it; I’m just saying the soft, moist kind of burger Jim writes about will do best on something fluffy and compressive. If you can find a brioche bun, give it a try - everything’s better with more egg and butter.

The New York Times has a fascinating page one story today about salt. It’s an interesting piece of reporting about the effect of salt on food, particularly processed food, and how the food industry has not just embraced but become addicted to salt over the decades. It’s also a peek into how the government regulates the food we eat and the tension between scientific research, the food industry, government and your average grocery shopper.

I always worry when I read stories likes this one, though, because I fear that the lesson learned at the end isn’t “eat fewer processed foods” but “salt is bad”. And since my email and twitter have already filled with questions about this latest salvo against salt, here’s my bit.

First, you need salt to live, just like you need fat, so completely getting rid of it, even if you could, is a bad idea. Second, the vast majority of salt consumed, particularly in Western diets, comes from processed foods, not from properly seasoning your food while you’re cooking — the NYT article claims processed and restaurant foods account for 80% of Americans’ salt intake.

The human palate is highly attuned to detect salt, which, along with finicky consumers, makes it difficult for processed food manufacturers like Kraft and Kellogg to significantly reduce salt without driving their customers away. Add to the fact that salt is a much cheaper additive than, say, fresh herbs, and it’s easy to understand why the food industry is reluctant to stop over-salting the food they process for us.

Which leads to an obvious recommendation: eat fewer processed foods, cook more, use fresh ingredients but don’t be afraid to properly season your food with salt. It’s obvious, though not necessarily easy, and it’s something we hope to help with.

I don’t really consider a probe thermometer in the first tier of kitchen instruments, like I do a sharp knife and a sturdy pan. It’s a nicety, something you acquire when you want to add a little more precision to your cooking — you don’t need one when you’re roasting a chicken, but it sure does eliminate the guess work.

The basics of a probe thermometer are these: a metal probe, about six inches long or so, gets inserted into a piece of meat that you then put in your oven or on your grill to cook. A wire several feet in length connects to a device with a readout that tells you the temperature. Usually you can set an alarm to go off when the probe hits a certain point and you don’t have to worry about over or under cooking dinner. Once you start cooking according to temperature, instead of time, you’ll never go back.

Simple though this may sound, most probe thermometers are garbage. They run about $10-$15 and aren’t worth a tenth of that. I’ve burned through three or four in the past few years, trashed for being burdened with complexity and underprivileged in functionality. Most simply crap out after a few months, inexplicably.

Having suffered yet another failure, I was recently in my local kitchen supply store resigned to dropping yet another ten spot on yet another soon-to-be-junk thermometer when I spotted the OXO Good Grips Digital Leave-In Meat Thermometer. I honestly don’t own much OXO gear, I’ve never really liked their aesthetic and I think they tend a bit too much towards the gadgetiziation of our kitchens, though I do admire the thought they put into their designs (Company President Alex Lee talked about OXO’s design philosophy at the 2008 Gel conference). I was intrigued because not only was this a $40 thermometer but the shape, long and rectangular with about half the number of buttons, stood out immediately. Despite the expense, I decided this would be my next thermometer.

Where most of the readouts I’ve used are stout and squarish, this one is sleek and long. Turns out there’s a good reason for this as the probe fits right inside the display with the cable wrapping around the outside for a single, compact unit. Brilliant! No more sticking myself on a rogue probe in my gear drawer. The interface is wonderfully simple — a button for temperature, one for a timer, up and down keys, a confirm and reset button. There are controls along the top for flipping between Celsius and Fahrenheit and turning the alarm on or off. The last model I had had twice as many buttons molded in plastic that only worked on every other press and all sorts of bizarre, difficult to explain features and modes.

Setting the temp couldn’t be easier — you can either pick your own or choose based on the type of meat and desired doneness. Happily, the good people at OXO have decided to include both the official USDA doneness temps and chef-suggested ones that will help ensure your food is safe but not overdone. It will mean the difference between a perfect steak and one that more resembles beef jerky. Accuracy seemed to be spot on, I boiled a pot of water and it registered between 211.7° and 212.2°F, a level of fluctuation I consider perfectly acceptable for cooking at home.

My only concern was the silicon coated cable and whether it might melt in the oven; other probes I’ve used sheath their cables in metal. OXO says their cable is fine up to about 475°F, I tested it in my oven at 450°F for half an hour and didn’t have any problems though I’m not sure I’d venture much higher. I do most of my roasting between 350° and 425°F so I’m not so worried.

Considering I’ve probably spent around $50 on probe thermometers through the years, I’m hoping that this investment might be the one that finally pays off.