The Schlow Burger

D loves burgers and enjoys experimenting with them, whether it be trying different burger restaurants or even making me experiment with the patties at home. I have to say, we do quite nicely in the burger stakes at home. D was browsing the internet and found Michael Schlow's award winning burger, the Schlow Burger and he wanted to try it.

The recipe as written includes a creamy horseradish sauce, crispy onions and good quality Vermont or English cheddar cheese, plus 80% lean ground beef for the patties. We cheated a little. We used some of the more expensive supermarket lean ground beef but I'm not sure of its fat percentage. We used Coon extra tasty cheese because that was what we had on hand and we omitted the horseradish sauce, because I didn't have any "prepared white horseradish", whatever that is.

500g of mince made three patties (although one ended up being quite misshapen, not sure how), we had one each for dinner on toasted Turkish rolls and I had one for lunch the next day using a bun made from my brioche dough. The brioche was perfect for the burger.

The patty was fabulously meaty. The mince is only lightly seasoned and there is nothing there that can mask the flavour of lower quality mince. Although we did buy the best the supermarket had, I think that next time I will get the mince from a butcher to take it to that next flavour level.


I did try making the crispy onions and they were an overwhelming success. They were so easy and added this awesome taste and texture to the burger.


Our version of the Schlow Burger was amazing. It was completely satisfying and was quite possibly a better burger than I've had from many a burger restaurant. It celebrated the flavour of the ingredients and everything really worked well together.

The Schlow Burger recipe can be found here.