Hemingway Burgers

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This has been on my to-do-list since 2014 
when ..."about two thousand newly digitized documents of Ernest Hemingway’s 
personal papers in Cuba finally wending their way to the John F. Kennedy
 Presidential Library and Museum in Boston. This was the second batch of
 Hemingway papers to arrive from his home in Cuba, where he lived from 
1939 to 1960"... 

This is why the Hemingway burger recipe is in the this section.  It was likely developed there by Ernie and/or his fourth wife Mary but who knows for sure.  

I knew about this hamburger almost immediately but it took until now to follow through. What was I waiting for?

The original digitized recipe with footnotes describing other additional ingredients which can also be added or used as substitutes.  I left these out so no minced standard ham, chopped tomato, grated cheddar, grated apple, grated carrots, mushrooms or parsley was added. 

FROM EXPERIMENTING,

 PAPA’S FAVORITE HAMBURGER. There 
is no reason why a fried hamburger  has to turn out gray, greasy, 
paper-thin and tasteless. You can add all  sorts of goodies and flavors 
to the ground beef — minced mushrooms,  cocktail sauce, minced garlic 
and onion, chopped almonds, a big dollop  of piccadilli, or whatever 
your eye lights on. Papa prefers this  combination.

 Ingredients —

 1 lb. ground lean beef

 2 cloves, minced garlic
 2 little green onions, finely chopped
 1 heaping teaspoon, India relish
 2 tablespoons, capers
 1 heaping teaspoon, Spice Islands sage
 Spice Islands Beau Monde Seasoning — ½ teaspoon
 Spice Islands Mei Yen Powder — ½ teaspoon **
 1 egg, beaten in a cup with a fork
 About one third cup dry red or white wine.
 1 tablespoon cooking oil

 What to do —

 Break up the meat with a fork and 
scatter the garlic, onion and dry  seasonings over it, then mix them 
into the meat with a fork or your  fingers. Let the bowl of meat sit out
 of the icebox for ten or fifteen  minutes while you set the table and 
make the salad. Add the relish,  capers, everything else including wine 
and let the meat sit, quietly  marinating, for another ten minutes if 
possible. Now make four fat,  juicy patties with your hands. The patties
 should be an inch thick, and  soft in texture but not runny. Have the 
oil in your frying-pan hot but  not smoking when you drop in the patties
 and then turn the heat down and  fry the burgers about four minutes. 
Take the pan off the burner and  turn the heat high again. Flip the 
burgers over, put the pan back on the  hot fire, then after one minute, 
turn the heat down again and cook  another three minutes. Both sides of 
the burgers should be crispy brown  and the middle pink and juicy.

 ** Spice Islands discontinued its 
production of Mei Yen Powder three  years ago. If you don’t have any in 
your pantry, here’s how to recreate  it:
 9 parts salt
 9 parts sugar
 2 parts MSG
 If a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon Mei Yen Powder, use 2/3 tsp of the dry recipe (above) mixed with 1/8 tsp of soy sauce.

The burger mixture on its second marination with added beaten egg and wine.  Total marination time for both marination's was 30 minutes.

The recipe doesn't mention to not overwork the burger mix when shaping into patties so I will do that here.  This mix with wine and egg could easily turn into a meatloaf so don't overwork the mix.  I opted to form the one pound of ground meat mixture into four equal sized balls because these are going to be Hemingway Smash Burgers on account of the overworking thing.

Up close and personal

Papa preferred his burgers pan fried but I used a better option along with a better smash burger technique   
"The patties should be an inch thick, and  soft in texture but not runny."  They were exactly that.

Flip em

A beautiful evening was in store for enjoying a Hemingway Wild West Hamburger.  Sometimes everything just falls together.  I'm stoked.

These burgers are some serious gourmet s**t 
No condiments required.
Worth the effort?
Yes, and very little effort was made past tracking down the ingredients.

The Hemingway's would have undoubtedly used what is now referred to as "grass fed" beef for these burgers.  Grain fed hadn't happened yet.  I don't think. 