Red Wine Burgers and Homemade Buns

We wanted to do a great bbq cookout to celebrate the start of summer. We settled on cooking up an interesting kind of burger and doing everything ourselves. That meant, the patty, the bun, and even the fries. It was an extravagant meal to pull off, and although we stumbled a few times, it all came together eventually.

The buns came from a recipe on Confections of a Foodie Bride, and we couldn't be more thrilled with how they turned out.

The whole process was pretty easy, and it was fun drizzling on our own "everything" mix, which featured the ingredients in the perfect ratio we like.

And when we pulling them out of the oven, I was worried we might not be patient enough to wait for the burgers to cook. I might just get started eating immediately. But we made it, and the result was worth it. The buns were slightly crisp on the outside, but perfect and soft on the inside when you bite through.

Oh to make the perfect fry. It's a valiant goal, but a damn difficult one. We researched and researched and decided on the double fry method using peanut oil. The peanut oil was a great choice, but we didn't even get a chance to get to the double fry.

That picture was taken just moments before the oil went everywhere. First lesson of deep frying: leave it to the restaurants. Okay, maybe we'll try it again, but this sure was a mess. The moment the fries hit the oil, everything began to rise and suddenly we had smoking oil overflowing all onto our counter top. Thank god it didn't ruin anything or start a fire. So much for the perfect fry. We scooped up the fries out of the deep fryer and transfered them over to a pan with a hefty amount of oil in it, and cooked them pan fried instead. In the end they came out still really tasty.

To make the burgers, we followed this recipe for Red Wine Burgers. We had a little trouble when we reduced the red wine sauce. We were focusing on a fries for a little too long and came back to a hardened, sticky, mess and it tasted awfully burnt. So, as they do on TV, you throw it out and make it again. The second time we made it, Erin watched it like a hawk, stirring constantly, and it came out brilliantly.

Once we mixed that red wine sauce into the ground beef, we formed them into patties and used the "thumb trick" from Bobbie Flay to keep them juicy on the grill.

Along with the patties we also grilled up thick sliced tomatoes from the Farmer's Market. And it wouldn't be a tasty burger without cheese melted all on top!

Although we struggled in a few areas, these burgers, buns, and fries came out really tasty (and we learned a few things too).