so my wonderful wife got me a meat grinder attachment for our standing mixer for christmas. i love me some new toys to play with in the kitchen. the first thing i made was 50/50 burgers, which i had seen on the food network show: diners, drive-ins and dives. it's a hamburger patty made with 50% ground beef and 50% ground bacon. delicious. but this is not about the 50/50 beef and bacon burgers.
we had our friend, lalos, over to watch the texans game on saturday. we were going to be making a grocery store trip that day anyway and needed to come up with something to cook and share for the game. i don't know what made me think of it, but i was hoping for another excuse to use my new toy and feel like i had heard of shrimp burgers before, so why not try making a 50/50 SHRIMP and bacon burger patty? we picked up some shrimp and bacon at the store and brought it home to give it a whirl.
i didn't search around on the internet for a recipe or anything, i just thought of some ingredients that i thought might go well with shrimp and bacon: soy sauce, garlic, ginger, sesame oil. the shrimp i bought (about 1.75 lb) was deveined, but i still needed to remove the tails and shells. i cut the bacon (i believe a 12 oz package) into about one inch pieces. i tossed the bacon and shrimp together, just so that as i fed it through my meat grinder, they'd blend together a bit. everything i had read about grinding meat was to make sure it's cold as possible without being frozen, so that it pushes through the grinder easily without mushing or binding, so i put the bowl i was using in the freezer for about a half an hour.
i ground up the bacon and shrimp together, using the 4 setting on the mixer. i can't lie, the ground shrimp and bacon mixture was disgusting, to the point that i was getting discouraged that this wouldn't work. it was a mushy mess, but i soldiered on with my plan. i added a few shakes of soy sauce, quite a bit of fresh ground pepper, some ground garlic and ground ginger, a bit of salt, and probably a tablespoon of sesame oil, then mixed it together with my hands. i formed up about five pretty large patties. i might have been able to stretch it into six, but i wanted to be sure they were big enough to fill a bun. they don't form up as easily as beef, but you can get them into a patty shape and arrange them on a plate or cutting board as you wait to cook them up.
i was planning on cooking them on my cast iron skillet all along, but i don't know if i could have grilled them if i wanted to. they might have slid through the grate. i heated up my skillet with some grape seed oil until it was nice and hot (just starting to smoke a little). i was able to fit three patties in my skillet at a time and once i put them on, i reduced the heat to medium and put a lid on it. i cooked them about 3-4 minutes a side, but just like with cooking shrimp whole, they firmed up and lost their translucence as they cooked, so it was pretty easy to tell when they were done. once cooked, they had browned up pretty well and looked very much like burgers.
while the burgers were cooking, amanda sliced up an avocado and i diced up half a chipotle pepper and mixed it into about a third of a cup of mayo with about a tablespoon of the adobe sauce. we tend to use those really thin sandwich rounds for our burgers. we started this mostly to cut down on the amount of wheat amanda had to deal with, but ended up really liking that it minimized the non-burger part of the equation.
so we served up the bacon/shrimp burgers with avocado and chipotle mayo and the result was simply outstanding. as you'd expect, it's the flavor of bacon wrapped shrimp, but in a nice big patty. The texture was pleasing. The patties held together well, better than an average hamburger actually, and were nice and juicy. the bacon flavor was very present, but it still tasted mostly like a big hunk of shrimp, with a lot of great added flavor. i thought the avocado and chipotle mayo were a good choice, but you could probably go with a teriaki sauce or some other condiment of choice. they were good enough that i ground up another two pounds of shrimp the next day with a pound of bacon and put six patties in the freezer. i don't know if you could make them without a grinder, although maybe you could try it with a food processor.
so here's the recipe (i'm just guessing, because i didn't actually measure anything):
1.75-2 lbs of shrimp (you'll lose a little, but not much, in the grinder)
12-16 oz of bacon
2-3 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of sesame oil
2 tsp of garlic powder
2 tsp of ground ginger
1 tbsp of ground pepper
1 tsp of salt
grind shrimp and bacon together. mix together with all other ingredients. form into patties. pan fry, in a cast iron skillet if possible. serve with sliced avocado and chipotle mayo (or your preferred accouterments). enjoy!
