Ice House, Eat Your Heart Out!

Here's something that I kinda wanted to do for a while. I always wondered what it would be like to create my own super burger. Seeing as that I love to eat (too much!!), I figured I'd give it a try.

Not long ago, I had an "ice burger" from the Ice House Tavern in Emerald Park. It wasn't bad, but they must've used regular as opposed to lean ground beef; I found the burger a little greasy. Thankfully, Leanne & I have an ample supply of excellent beef from Lisa & Lyle's farm (you guys rock!); their ground beef is quite lean.

The first task was to bake my own bun. I couldn't find any bakery, etc. that could supply my need, so I went about doing some baking (with a little help from a bread mix). After a few cruddy attempts (it's a pain to wait for the dough to rise), I finally created a decent bun.

After I finally got that right, I went about (during one boring night off from work) creating my masterpiece.

Here are 5 strips of the good thick bacon...not the paper thin regular stuff.

This meat patty (about 2 pounds) was a challenge to load onto the grill - not to mention flipping it - but with the help of a dinner plate, it wasn't really too hard.

Viola - the finished product. Note that it takes up almost all of the dinner plate. The other ingredients for this monster were: 1 large sliced tomato, 3 sliced dill pickles, 6 leaves of romaine lettuce, about 1/3 of a large onion (sauteed - yum), ketchup, mustard, relish, and mayonnaise with a some chipotle Tabasco sauce mixed in (yum, again). This picture isn't quite like the ones you see on TV when they advertise hamburgers, but it does look presentable, right?

Here we go! Now THIS is a real man's meal!

Here's a dandy little cross section of this wonderous meal. Note that the meat paddy wasn't quite as thick as I wanted, but I guess you can't have everything.

Sadly, I was only able to finish half of the burger in one sitting. I was looking forward to the challenge of finishing it all at once, but eating to the point of getting sick ain't much fun...which I almost did; that burger was bloody heavy! Leanne was kind enough to help me finish the other half the next evening (yeah, yeah...I guess I'm not that manly, after all ;-).

To all who want to emulate this attempt at a super burger, the best of luck to you! You won't (may) regret it!