This IS a tasty burger!

"This IS a tasty burger!" - Samuel L. Jackson in PULP FICTION


Get ready to salivate.

Is there anything better than a hamburger?  For Americans, maybe not.  Many of you know that I will travel great lengths to find the perfect pizza.  I once had my sister drive me all over NJ looking for a hot dog stand named Rutt's Hutt, because I saw it on TV once (totally worth the drive, by the way, I recommend 2 Rippers and a Frenchy Gravy, thank me later).  But I have traveled more places to find the best burger than any other iconic food group.  The burger is still KING!

"I don't know, I didn't go into Burger King." - John Travolta in PULP FICTION

And one of the things LA does consistently better than NY is a tasty burger.  In-N-Out is just the tip of the iceberg lettuce.  Ever eat at a Johnny Rockets?  Well we have the place that Johnny's was modeled after called The Apple Pan, which opened in the 1920's!  Any place that hasn't cleaned the grill in 80 years is going to be damn good!  We also have a slew of other amazing burger places (I highly recommend Lucky Devils on Hollywood Blvd).  Anyway, my point is, I'm not going to just eat any crappy burger, so if I'm gonna be on this kookie caveman diet, I have to reinvent a damn good burger or I'm gonna bite into a cow one day in a delusional rage from burger withdrawal.

My first meal on this diet was an organic rib eye steak from grass fed beef.  It looked amazing!  But it tasted like a shoe.  Mostly my fault however, because I cooked it well overdone.  I didn't realize that wild animals have a lot less fat in their system than factory farmed animals, and therefore, the meat cooks a lot faster.  I tried another steak a week later and even though this time I cooked it right, it was still CONSIDERABLY less tasty than the steak I'd been used to.  I was very depressed that my old friend beef and I were growing apart.

But then I found organic grass fed ground beef from Trader Joe's with 15% fat! (What's with the exclamation point, jerk-wad, this isn't a Trader Joe's commercial, relax).  Sorry.  But if they want to throw me a kick-back for saying it costs $5.99 a pound, be my guest!  15% is what I used to buy in the old B.C. days (Before Caveman), and I think it's the perfect balance for flavor.  So even though the grass fed steak had less flavor, Trader Joe's controls the flavor by controlling the fat!  I am WAY too excited about Trader Joe's!

Let's calm things down a sec by reopening the discussion on fat.  You've been told by dietitians for a long time now that fat is bad.  But it drives me crazy when I hear people cut out fat because they're trying to lose weight.  Fat has nothing to do with weight loss.  Bad fat will clog up your arteries and do all kinds of bad things to you, but it won't make you fat.  So now that we've straightened that mess out, let's get back to fat, good and bad.  Like I said before any wild animal has lots of Omega-3 fat, which is the key to good health, so please don't go low fat, just go good fat.  I'm gonna name my next dog Phat, so I can go around saying, "Good Phat, gooood Phat!"  My grandmother used to feed me a snack of chicken fat smeared on rye bread with Kosher salt sprinkled on top.  Years later we cringed at the unhealthiness of it all.  But now I'm thinking that chickens were probably still pretty healthy back then, and now I realize the healthiest part of that meal was probably the chicken fat!  Grandma knows best.

So for now, the only kind of beef I found that I like on this diet is the 15% brand at Trader Joe's.  Which is fine since my favorite beef dish is the almighty hamburger.  Let's make one, shall we.  I make 4 burgers out of the pound, forming my patties, and sprinkling on my Holy Trinity of spices, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper.  I pour a little sunflower oil (it seems to be the most neutral flavored oil on this diet, but when I want to add flavor I use olive or coconut oil), into a hot cast iron skillet to prevent sticking, and I slap those bad boys on for only about a minute or two on each side.  Even though they have 15% fat, they'll still cook faster than factory farmed beef.  Then I let them settle on a plate while I build my burger.

I've already shown you how to make all the other goodies in previous blogs, so no need to give recipes again (look them up yourselves, you lazy bastards).  Rosemary bread for the bun, homemade Caveman Ketchup and Caveman Mayo, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and cucumbers with fresh dill to soothe my pickle craving (haven't figured out how to replace the cheese yet, and probably never will).

Now I'm not going to lie to you, this will not be the best burger you've ever had, but you pick it up, and it tastes like a great home cooked burger, the fresh ingredients doing all the work for you.  It totally satisfies your expectations of taste, smell, and feel of a burger, and you totally get that satisfied feeling you expect after eating a great burger (no french fries substitute yet, but I'm experimenting, just you wait).  And does it look like a burger?  You tell me:

Mmmm, Caveman very happy.  Ugga-Bugga Burger gooooood!

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