Leftovers, Quickly (the beginning of a series): Red Wine Jus Hamburgers à la Julia Child

I rarely get a craving for a good steak. A good burger, on the other hand...well, that's a completely different story. The thing I like most about all these steakhouses that now populate our country is not their super-duper dry-aged grass-fed Kobayashi steaks of expensiveness. Rather, it's the fact that most of them serve damn good burgers at the bar.

After ending up with a lot of leftover and pricey (it required half a bottle of cabernet sauvignon) red wine jus from my skirt steak and caramelized shallots attempt, I thought that it might taste good mixed into a burger. So, I went on the hunt for a good burger recipe, of which there are hundreds.

But, I found an intriguing recipe and decided to use it: Biftek Haché à la Lyonnaise from Julia Child's seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking. That's right, Julia did a "hamburger" recipe in her first cookbook. It is a little more than a burger, however, because it contains an egg, sauteed onions, thyme, salt, pepper, and butter with lean ground beef. In contrast, Alton Brown's "Best Burger Ever" Recipe simply combines equal parts of three types of ground meat: two kinds of beef and ground lamb. Period.

I made some adjustments to Julia's recipe for a couple of reasons: wanting to make the best use of my leftovers, and the recommendation of the Five Dot Ranch butcher at Oxbow.

First, Julia suggests using a lean ground beef and then adding fat in the form of butter and an egg. But, the butcher at Five Dot Ranch suggested using a fattier beef, ground chuck (80-85% lean, as compared to ground sirloin which is 90-92% lean), so I cut back on introducing more fat to the mix. This meant no butter and no egg.

Second, I had a little bit of leftover shallot, so I used that instead of sauteed onions.

Third, and finally, I used about 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of leftover red wine jus for one pound of meat.

To assemble my patties, I combined the sauteed shallots, jus, thyme (also leftover from previous recipes), salt, and pepper in a bowl. I formed the meat into three patties, two medium and one small, and let them rest in the fridge for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, I melted a tablespoon of butter with about the same amount of canola oil in a stainless-steel skillet.

(A finished patty -- sorry for the overall lack of pictures!)

Julia suggested adding a light coating of flour to the exterior of the burger, which I did, before cooking. I cooked the burger for a total of about 10 minutes, five on each side, and then let them rest. While they were resting I toasted a couple pieces of sourdough bread from the Model Bakery (a St. Helena bakery with a Napa location in Oxbow) and spread on some whole-grain mustard.

That was the sum total of the condiments this burger received. I wanted to see how the flavor of the beef could stand up on its own. And, it did surprisingly well. The jus added some salt and richness to the burger that it would be hard to incorporate in any other way. While this may not be the purist's burger, it was pretty tasty...and that's good enough for me.