grill, meet hamburger

Perhaps I was too hard on the personal grill in my last entry.  During a recent trip to the grocery store, I purchased some short-dated hamburger patties (I know.  You are saying to yourself "Now wait a minute, she's eating red meat?  And what is this that I'm reading about short-dated red meat?  Am I on the right blog?  Kelly?"  Do not worry, friends.  This purchase was influenced by the $2 off manager's coupon stuck to the packaging and the promise that I could always just freeze the patties instead of consuming them all in one night.)  The original plan was to cook them as I always had: thrown in a frying pan over medium heat until cooked on either side, and then cover and put over low heat until cooked thoroughly.  Once home, I thought I would give the grill another chance.  My burns have healed.  Maybe we could be friends.

I sliced each patty in half to create 8 smaller patties instead of 4 behemoth patties.  Each sad-patty got wrapped in aluminum foil and tossed in a Ziploc bag to go in the freezer.  I'm really trying to master this cooking for one thing, and I think I might be on the right track.  It's taken me over 6 months to realize that if I cook an entire pound of meat at one time, then chances are that I will either tire of eating it or it will go bad before the week's end.  The short-dated hamburger represents saving money and not wasting so much food.

So I fired up the grill to just make one hamburger.  This would never be possible with a regular grill.  In fact, we rarely used the charcoal grill we had sitting on the porch last summer because I was often told that I didn't have enough to cook on it to make all the effort worth it.  Well, fine.  Jokes on you, because now I can have a hamburger whenever I want.

It was a success.  No burns were sustained, no grease flew anywhere, and a hamburger was done in mere moments.  I had a nice roll, some sliced red onions, a mix of mayonnaise and ketchup, and a bed of baby spinach for the hamburger to rest upon.  I've made a couple since then, relishing in the fact that I don't have to eat a hamburger for 5 days straight just because I bought a pound of meat.  Progress.