LYNN BAIN shares the recipe for her favourite burger sauce.
Assembling the perfect steak burger is very much a personal thing.
Some people like lots of flavours on their burgers, others only a few.
The options are numerous: what sort of buns, toasted or untoasted? What type of sauce? Onions — yes/no, crunchy or caramelised? Tomatoes — fresh or oven roasted? Beetroot — pickled or roasted? Then there is the choice of greens — rocket, lettuce, baby spinach or a mixture?
I would like to share my favourite steak burger with you — toasted bun, medium-rare steak, blue cheese sauce, caramelised onion slices and lots of some type of greenery such as spinach or rocket. Simple but so full of flavour and textures. This burger to me is perfection — just the right size!
Handy hack one: The title does say ‘blue cheese’, but you could use any full-flavoured cheese that you may have lurking in your fridge as an alternative.
Handy hack two: It is an option to substitute a little citrus zest for the mustard in the following recipe. I like to use a wholegrain mustard because I love the texture of the mustard grains in the sauce.
BLUE CHEESE BURGER SAUCE
INGREDIENTS
300ml thickened (double) cream
1 tbsp butter
100g blue cheese
2 heaped tbsp Parmesan cheese, grated
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
1-2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
Step 1: In a small heavy-based saucepan, heat the cream and butter together until the butter has melted. Bring the contents of the saucepan to a gentle simmer and then lower the heat.
Step 2: Crumble the blue cheese into small pieces. Add the blue cheese a piece at a time to the saucepan. Whisk to incorporate the cheese into the cream/butter mixture. Continue to do this with the remaining blue cheese until all of the cheese has been incorporated into the mixture.
Step 3: Add the grated Parmesan cheese to the mixture in the saucepan and whisk to combine.
Step 4: Gently stir in the mustard until it is well combined.
Step 5: Now add the chopped flat-leaf parsley and stir through. Your blue cheese sauce is ready to add to your steak burger.
Step 6: Steak burger ‘stacked and ready’ to eat, drizzled with lots of delicious blue cheese sauce. Get ready tummy, here it comes.