METHOD

The mushroom sauce

• Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the mushrooms, salt and pepper, and cook on a medium heat for 3 or 4 minutes, tossing frequently.
• Add the milk, mix well and then add the cheese. Heat gently for about 5 minutes, by which time the cheese should have melted. Take off the heat until everything else is just about ready, then warm up again at the end.

The burgers

Before we begin:

Many people who fancy themselves as expert on burgers would recommend mince with a higher fat content. Practically, we have found that supermarket mince with a high fat content also has a high gristle content, and we therefore seek to avoid it. If you have a local butcher for whom this doesn't apply, fat yourself out. For everyone else, this concoction has plenty of things to keep it moist, so please don't fret about this.

Burger patties should be flat, not round. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a lunatic. A burger press is not critical, but they are not expensive and do guarantee a good shape and texture.

The burgers in this recipe are deliberately small, as we think this suits the crumpet format well.          


• Mix the beef, egg yolk and horseradish sauce together in a large bowl, and divide into patties.
• Season really well. Again, you'll hear from others that you don't want to do this until you've cooked the burgers. This is probably true of the pepper, but it's difficult to add this later, and it works just fine adding at the start. On salt, people just don't know what they are talking about: the salt massively enhances the flavour during cooking and is an absolute must.
• Get the barbeque piping hot before putting the burgers on.
• The bacon will take less time than the burgers, but will happily keep in tinfoil for a little while.
• Add the cheese to the burgers as they finish cooking. Melting the cheese makes it much nicer.

The crumpets




• Toast the crumpets on a hot barbeque until they look like this.
• Add the mustard, gherkins and onions (or whatever condiments you like), then the bacon, then the burger, before spooning on the mushroom sauce.
• You might want a knife and fork for this.




 

OTHER NOTES

As ever, don't forget to use bacon from happy pigs (and eggs from happy hens) or karma might come to bite you on the arse.