I have never been to White Castle. Makiko hasn’t either – she never even heard of the place before tonight. Personally – I’ve always wanted to try one but with the nearest White Castle a good 12,000 kms away there’s a good chance we won’t be visiting one anytime soon.

So – what are our options?

• Forget it. What’s the attraction anyways, it’s just some fast food joint?
• Make a trip to the States just to try one.
• Be entrepreneurs and bring the franchise to Australia.
• Make replicas at home of what we’d imagine White Castle burgers to be like.

Hmmm…

Forgetting it wouldn’t be much fun now, would it? There’s something really intriguing about their burgers…

Taking a trip to the States just for a burger? Sounds a bit extreme doesn’t it. Even more so is trying to set up shop here.

Making our own replicas? Yep – Scott & Makiko are off to White Castle…

I’ve been inspired lately by some posts on the Web from others raving about how great White Castle is. Harold and Kumar didn’t help either. Then, I came across this recipe that someone claimed to be faithful to the real thing. I tracked down some other “Castle Clones” – but this one looked like the simplest to make – so now we had our game plan.

Step 1 – Smoosh out about a pound of extra lean ground beef on wax paper with a rolling pin…

This was surprisingly easy. It’s almost like making ground beef cookies.

Step 2 – Put it in a baking tray and cut it into ~3 inch squares, and puncture each patty with 5 pen sized holes…

These holes will come in handy later – trust me.

Now this is honestly the sexiest looking tray of burger patties I’ve ever seen. Be sure they’re seasoned with a bit of salt pepper. Whack the tray in the freezer for at least 30 mins to firm up the meat. That’ll help maintain the classic square shape we’re looking for during cooking.

Step 3 – Prepare your buns and condiments. The only condiments required are cheese, onions and pickles.

The buns should ideally be your basic square dinner rolls – sliced horizontally. We had trouble finding some, so we bought hot dog buns instead and halved them:

Step 4 – Cook the onions and patties. Drop some clumps of diced onions on a heated frying pan – flattening them as best as possible. Next lay a patty down on top of each onion clump to steam it…

Ideally – you shouldn’t have to flip the burgers. That’s the magic of the holes – to steam the patty all the way through. Did it work? Well…

… you be the judge. The onions started burning while the top still looked like this. In favor of not burning the onions further (and avoiding tape worms), I decided to flip them to brown both sides. Perhaps over time I’ll learn how to perfect the burger cooking process.

Step 5 – Make your burger! Ensure that the onions are on top of the meat – followed by the cheese (optional) and pickle(s).

Not bad, not bad…

From what I’ve seen, that’s a reasonable facsimile.

Step 6 – Eat!

How was it? Not the best burger I’ve had – but pretty good. Perhaps I needed a bit more seasoning in the burger meat – who knows. I’ll say this much: they’re freakin’ small! I had to eat 4 to feel full! I would expect that to be the same story if you go to one of their stores.

Now – I just need a means of trying the real thing to see how ours stacked up.

Hmmm…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Food, Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.