Disclaimer: I am not a food blogger. I understand that the small amounts of butter, cream, and cheese skirt around the edges of hardcore paleoism, but I have found a happy balance for myself and you'll have to search your caveman soul long and hard to decide if small amounts of dairy are right for you.
Ok, with that out of the way, let's get started. To keep you interested, here is the final product:
So Here is what you need to get started:
Starting at 6:00 - 2 Portabella caps, button mushrooms, 1 lb of ground beef, pepper, cauliflower, a yellow onion, butter, cream, gorgonzola, salt, and about 8 cloves of garlic.
Chop up the cauliflower and start boiling it. You'll need it to be tender to mash it and that can take a little while, so I like to start it right off the bat. Here is how roughly I chopped it up:
Now that that's boiling, take your time and get everything else prepped. I started with the button mushrooms.
Next, I used a microplane to get the garlic into a paste. I filed down 8 cloves of garlic, seperating half of it for the burgers and half of it for the cauliflower. I love garlic, so feel free to cut that down by as much as half if you're not such a fan of the stuff. Quick note - this microplane is awesome for quickly prepping garlic and also making lemon or lime zest for Mexican dishes.
Next, roughly chop the onions. Roughly chopping them will help give some texture to the burgers. Ultimately, it's up to you how many onions you put in the burgers. I used half an onion for a pound of meat.
Mash the onions and half of your garlic into the meat. I prepare the meat on parchment paper for 2 reasons. For one, it helps with contamination (although I rarely worry with beef) and it also helps keep the burgers in nice thin patties while transferring them to the grill. After mashing the meat together with the garlic and onion, portion it out into a few equally sized balls then mash them down into imperfect little discs. After that, you can transfer them directly onto your grill by flipping the parchment paper over.
At this point, you should be able to poke a fork into the cauliflower and it should come right back out. If it sticks in the cauliflower, wait a couple more minutes and try again. Once it's tender enough for the fork to come out, strain the water and toss a small cube of butter into the pan to start melting. Looks like I left some paper on the butter. Oops. Begin mashing the cauliflower into the butter. Once you've gotten the cauliflower broken down quite a bit add about a tablespoon of cream. Continue mashing adding a small amount of cream to the mix until you get the texture you like, but be careful. Boiled cauliflower holds a lot of moisture and if you add too much cream, you'll just get soup. Next, add the garlic, some salt, a few grinds of pepper to your personal taste and mix. Let that sit for a few so the garlic has some time to mellow out a little bit.
At this point, the burgers should be ready to flip. After you flip them, press them down, but only a little bit. We'll need the fat to sautee the mushrooms. Add the button mushrooms to the greasy areas of your grill. Add your portabellas at this time as well, but you may need to rub them in the oil of your choice to keep them from burning. If you have a nice pool of beef fat somewhere on the grill, feel free to use that. I know I would.
OK, we're almost done. Pull the burgers and mushrooms off as they're ready and put the gorgonzola cheese crumbles on ASAP. I like my gorgonzola to melt a little before serving the burgers.
At this point you're ready to plate everything up.......and now we've come full circle to that first picture of the post. Eat up!
