Homemade Frozen Burgers

Last month I mentioned in my "grocery" breakdown that we had finally finished our last sleeve of burgers... It was a sad day folks.

Now I see some of you out there just rolling your eyes at me and trying to direct me to the freezer section of the grocery store. But that just won't work anymore as I have not been able to find any Frozen Organic Burgers... and we are trying to go Organic.

I was a little hesitant to attempt to make them myself since our previous homemade burgers of the past had resulted in grumbled bits of meat on our bbq grill... but I've since become a bit wise thanks to you all!

When we went to Costco last, we picked up a 3 pack of Kirkland Organic Ground Beef (85% lean). Each package has 1.34 lbs of meat in it and I decided to "try" out a single package first in case they were a disaster.

My Recipe/Directions:

• Empty Meat package into a bowl.
• Dice up a head of garlic... toss that into bowl.
• Splash in some Worcester cause hubs like that...
• Add 1/4 cup oat flour. (Aka, Organic Oats sent through my wheat grinder)...
• MIX it up.

I decided not to use egg as a binder since my other recipes with egg in the past have crumbled and broken apart... but I did try adding some grains by using the ground up oats (thought that was healthier then bread crumbs since its basically oatmeal) and that really helped solidify the meat. I also think I got away with no egg because the meat was leaner.

Because you all are so smart (Nadia), I decided to sacrifice the lid from my peanut butter jar to use as a free burger press. (It also helped that the jar was basically empty and needed to be replaced).

I basically took the meat out of the bowl and pressed it into the lid... then flipped it over on the counter (covered in parchment paper) and smacked the lid. I expected the burger to come right out... but it didn't work. I think the parchment paper didn't give the meat enough of a sticking surface to attach to so I ended up smacking the meat filled peanut butter lid onto a cutting board.. and the meat came out perfectly. I then transferred the patties over to the parchment paper.

I got a total of 7 burgers exactly out of one package of meat. No extra meat in the bowl and no slightly smaller or bigger patties much to my surprise. So each burger uncooked is around 3.1 oz, which is actually what the average serving size for meat should be for me (SCB generally has 2 with a meal so 6 oz is pretty decent for him as well).

Not wanting the patties to stick together when freezing, I transferred the parchment paper onto a baking sheet and I ended up just balancing the rack in my chest freezer between the two baskets since the lid had plenty of room to close.

They weren't completely frozen by dinner time since they were only in there for an hour and a half, so I just removed the three patties we planned on using... and to my complete delight, they stayed in tact on the grill and were really tasty. They didn't shrink much, but they were a little smaller than the buns we used to eat them with (the cheap ones from Costco) so it looks like i'm going to half to work on making our own because those burgers were too yummy to live on those crappy buns.

The next morning I took the frozen burgers and just put them in a Tupperware container in the freezer. (I cut the parchment paper up to place in between them so they don't freeze together.)

Now that I know that works, I'll do the other 2 meat packages (once I get more garlic) so we have a stock pile of them ready to go for a fast meal since we generally eat burgers a couple times a month since the weather normally cooperates with is in Orange County.

We had the burgers with artichokes, and fresh pico salsa! You can see the smaller diameter of the burgers here, but they were really thick still. I think I might toss in a few more spices next time... but a win all around.