Best Burger Recipe with Pink Sauce

How frequently does it happen that you hear a tune and it got stuck in your head all day? 

Frequently. Right?

Now, how frequently does a picture or a video clip get stuck in your head?

Not often. Never? What?

This happens to me almost everyday. Does that make me weird?

Don’t answer that.

Especially if the photograph or the video clip is about food, I’ll be thinking about it all day. That’s what happened a few weeks ago.

(I’ve been lazy lately and not posting regularly.)

So, my husband and me are big fans of the TV show “Arrow”. We don’t miss a thing. If you know this show, you’ll know that Oliver Queen (the hero and the superhero “Arrow”) and his assistant goes to this burger joint in Starling City called “Big Belly Burger” at their leisure time. I mean, whenever he is not busy being “Arrow”. Now, every time I am watching this show and they show the characters having burger at Big Belly Burger, I get this incredible craving of having burgers. I’ll be thinking about that scene, when they dig into their burger and say how good it is, all day. I have to get a burger fix.

Thinking of burgers, the first place that comes to my mind is In n Out burger. (There’s no Big Belly in San Diego. Or is there? I’ve to check.) But, instead of going out, I decided to make burgers at home with In n Out Copycat pink sauce. Turned out to be the best. Loved it.

On a side note: If I ever open a burger joint, I’ll be naming it, well you guessed it, Big Belly Burger.

For 4 burgers, you need:

1 lb ground beef (I used 70% lean. Better is 60%.)
Salt and pepper for seasoning
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
Lettuce
Tomato, sliced
Red onion, sliced (I don't like raw onion in my burger, so I made caramelized "grilled" onion for my burger. To caramelize onion: add slices of one yellow onion to a sauté pan on medium-low heat with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Put the lid on the pan. Check every 10 min to see that the onions don't burn but get soft and caramelized. Takes about half and hour.)
4 or more slices of cheese (I used Kraft's American cheese)

Special Pink Sauce (recipe below)
4 Hamburger buns

Special Pink Sauce (In n Out Burger copycat)

½ cup mayonaise (Hellman's mayonaise are gluten free)
¼ cup ketchup (Heinz Ketchup is gluten free)
¼ cup relish (gluten free)
⅛ teaspoon (a pinch) salt
⅛ teaspoon (a pinch) sugar
⅛ teaspoon (a pinch) onion powder
¼ teaspoon (2 pinches) garlic powder
½ tablespoon worcestershire sauce

How:

Add worcestershire sauce to ground beef and mix it well. Divide the meat in four portions and make patties. Make the middle of the patties thinner than the outside. This will prevent the patties from swelling up when cooking.

Put a pan on or griddle on medium-high heat. Cook one side of the patties for 3 min. Flip it over and cook for another 3-4 min. Place a slice of cheese on top and remove the patty when the cheese is melty.

For Pink Sauce:

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Store away the unused sauce in a jar in your refrigerator. It will have the same life as your ketchup or mayo.

Build your burger:

Top part of bun
Lettuce
Tomato
Caramelized onion
Cheese
Beef patty
Pink sauce
Lower part of bun

5 min cake, 10 min raspberry sauce!

From craving to savoring in 15 min.

Go ahead and treat yourself at the end of your day with this!

I am no baker as I have already said many times before, do I still need to convince you? But I love to treat myself with a nice cake but the effort it takes to make one seems to be humongous for me (and failing after all that effort is so disheartening). Hence, comes my quick fix...faking baking (again)! Honestly speaking, this recipe may not be restaurant quality but I did savor it when I craved for a piece of cake at 9 pm.

I got inspired from a post by Edible Garden which she posted on facebook recently. Cake in 5 min! I had to try it! I love chocolate cake but I didn't have any cocoa powder in my pantry, so I added shredded chocolate chips (my fancy way of saying- chop your chocolate pieces with your knife into small pieces) to the recipe. Although this is an eggless recipe [Unfortunately I had no eggs either in my refrigerator that night, isn't that sad?], it turned out really nice. However my next one will be a proper chocolate cake in 1 min with egg. Will post that sometime later :)

Both me and my husband are very fond of a particular dessert joint in San Diego called "Extraordinary Desserts". They have the most fabulous cakes and ambience. I love a particular cake called "Truffe Framboise". Well, how about making my own raspberry/framboise sauce and add it to my quick cake. I have made this raspberry sauce a multiple time before and with strawberrys too. Turns out great every time. There are so many ways you can use this sauce. My favorite was, until now, to generously drizzle over a nice big scoop of vanilla ice cream. I slather it over almost anything, cookies, toast, even add it to yogurt!

Well, Enjoy this anytime you want, anyway you want!

5 min cake:
2 tbsp all purpose flour

1½ tbsp granulated sugar

¼ tsp baking powder

⅛ tsp salt

2 tbsp milk

1 tbsp oil/ melted cool butter

¼ tsp vanilla extract

1 tbsp chocolate chips (ran my knife through it to make small pieces)

Raspberry sauce:

6 oz raspberry

¼ cup sugar

juice of ½ lime

pinch of chili powder (Not to make it hot but to cut the sweetness a little!)

pinch of salt

Method for Cake:

Add all the dry ingredients to a microwave safe cup/mug except chocolate chips.

Then add all the wet ingredients.

Mix well. I whisked with a fork like I would whisk an egg.

Add the chocolate chips.

Transfer to a small bowl sprayed with non-stick oil (PAM), only if you want to decorate like I did. Otherwise put it in the microwave for 1 min. [IMPORTANT- Every microwave oven is different. My cake was done in 1 min. I check it poking with a toothpick. Keep an eye on your cup when it's in the microwave. Also, use at least a 8 oz cup/mug for this otherwise it will spill in the microwave oven.]

Method for sauce:

Add all the ingredients in a small sauce pan and put it on medium heat. In a min or two, you will see the raspberries breaking down and the juices flowing. Cook for 2 more minutes and depending on the consistency you desire, take it off heat and cook. It will thicken more as it cools. Don't worry if you have thickened it too much, you can always loosen it with some water, as I always do.