Ooh-La-La Ostrich Burgers

Hello, internet, I've missed you. Might I introduce you to my undergraduate thesis, by way of explanation?  I know it isn't much, but I can offer you 32,000 words of dribble about wild boars, the Stasi, girls' schools, and ball lightning in exchange for the months I've been away. Mostly I've been holed up in my thesis fortress, but a few errant weeks were spent in Vienna and Berlin, chasing down former denizens of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik. Maybe one day you will be able to read it in bookstores everywhere, assuming there are still bookstores.

While I was thus employed (ha! yes, it's true—my college paid me to go abroad and literally make things up), I had a lot of Austrian food, because I was staying with my aunt, and my aunt makes a mean schnitzel. Naturally the first thing I wanted to do upon my return to school was teach other people how to make a mean schnitzel. Also, as an English major and a terrible person, I felt duty-bound to inflict alliteration on the world, so my classes were called Klimt’s Kitchen: Cooking Kaiserschmarrn & Palatschinken and Vienna With a Vengeance: Wiener Schnitzel Wunderland. Because no matter what Southern California may tell you, Wiener Schnitzel is not a brand of sausage.

Of course, this class turned out to be Driving 101: How to Locate Exotic Meats That Are Not Even That Exotic, Seriously, It's Just Baby Cow. My quest encompassed one thwarted drive up to North Portland, two email chains, five grocery stores, and an infinite number of phone calls. I eventually found humanely-raised veal at a reasonable price from Nicky USA, a Portland retailer that has changed my life.

Because in the process of filling up my $150 minimum order, I was able to purchase a range of exotic meats.

This t-shirt that I used to wear as a kid had a picture of a kangaroo bouncing around in the Alps on it, and it said In Austria, there are no kangaroos.  From a very young age I adopted the bitterness that my countrymen have felt at being confused with koala-hugging denizens of the Southern Hemisphere. Hilariously, in the process of buying meat for an Austrian dish, I bought Australian meat.

I haven't cooked the kangaroo yet, but I did experiment with the python a month ago, with deliciously favorable results that I'll write up later on this blog. Pictured in the upper-right hand corner above is one of the two dishes I made, a reptilian spin on laab gai. Python, however, is anything but local, so unless I decide to hack some snakes in Florida and then fly them back on a plane, it might be a while before I put in an order of Burmese python.

The ostrich meat, though, comes from a farm in Oregon, so I am eating local! And in case you've never seen it before, yes, it's red meat, which I know is kind of weird, since it's a bird. But it's a very large bird. I've had ostrich once before, at a burger stand in London's Borough Market (where I also had kangaroo), so I decided to replicate the burgers. Above, in the lower left-hand square, are the results of my first trial—topped with cole slaw, sharp cheddar cheese, and mustard. With a glass of shiraz on the side, it was pretty delicious.

But I knew I could top it. How, you ask? By adding butter.

fines herbes

compound butter

Now you see it....

...now you don't.

Now, you might contend that adding half a tablespoon of butter to the inside of a burger is excessive. I'm  here to prove you wrong. Ostrich meat, for one thing, is absurdly lean, so it's not like there's much saturated fat to begin with. In the process of being cooked, instead of drying out, the meat turns all juicy on the inside and browned on the outside, and also, it bleeds butter. Need I say more?

Since I've only been eating meat for barely over a year now, I'm still pretty new to cooking it. I don't have any go-to recipes or standards. In the process of figuring out what meats I like to cook, I don't think I've made the same dish twice before this time around. I think I'm ready to start perfecting dishes that I like, and since this also provided the opportunity to eat a burger twice in three days, I felt this was a sacrifice I was ready to make. Also, round two consisted of wrapping a pat of butter in meat.

Because I am a heathen, I used an amount of shallots and garlic ordinarily called for in recipes that serve four. Because I am an animal, I fried everything in rendered bacon fat. And because I am a perfectionist, I measured out a quarter pound of meat on a scale.

I think I can safely say that this is one burger I would be happy to make again.



Composed Butter Ostrich Burger
makes 2 bad-ass big bird burgers

If you can't get your hands on flesh from the world's largest bird, then you can substitute with ground meat from the large mammal of your choice: beef, bison, kangaroo, you name it. This recipe requires you to plan ahead by about an hour: first to freeze the butter, then to bring the meat to room temperature, which takes about 30 minutes

for the compound butter (8 servings)
4 tbsp butter, softened
5 tsps fresh herbs of choice, minced (I used equal parts tarragon, marjoram, oregano, sage, and parsley)

1. In a small bowl, smoosh the butter and herbs together until the green bits are evenly distributed.
2. Scrape onto a sheet of plastic wrap and roll into a cylinder about 4 inches long and 1 inch in diameter. Wrap thoroughly and freeze for a few hours, overnight, or the 45 minutes it takes my superhuman freezer to freeze it solid.
3. This butter will keep for a few months in the freezer, but if you plan on doing that, wrap it extra tight and throw it in a freezer bag for good measure.

for the bad-ass bird burger
2 fresh-baked burger buns
several slices of extra sharp white cheddar
1 tbsp lard (or high-smokepoint fat of choice)
2 tbsp shallots, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 lb ground ostrich meat, brought to room temperature (~30 min)
fine sea salt & freshly-ground black pepper
coarse sea salt

1. Heat the broiler, and prep your burger buns: slice, slather with whole-grain mustard, layer with cheese.
2. In a medium skillet, heat the lard, then add the shallots and garlic. Sauté until golden, then set aside to cool. Don't wash the skillet, just wipe out the excess oil with a paper towel—we'll be using it again.
3. In a medium bowl, mix the ostrich meat with the cooled mixture, a sprinkle of salt, and freshly-ground pepper, using either a rubber spatula or your hands (extra bad-ass). Separate the mixture into two equal halves, and shape into a UFO/burger shape.
4. Take your butter out of the freezer and slice off two 1/2-inch slices. (This is where the photographs above differ from my directions—I sliced two 1/4-inch pieces per burger, which turned out to compromise the structural integrity of the patty).
5. Make an indentation in the center of each patty and add a slice of herb butter, then seal up the meat and reshape the patties so that they are about 1/2-inch thick.
6. Back to the buns: stick 'em in the broiler, and keep an eye on them while you cook the burgers in the next step.
7. Heat the same skillet used for the shallots over high heat. Sprinkle it with coarse sea salt; when the salt started to pop, immediately bring the heat down to low. Wait 1 minute, then add the patties, cooking them 4-5 minutes per side for medium rare.
8. Pull your buns out of the oven, slide the burgers on top, and serve with a topping of caramelized onions and mustard.