Brad Makes Burgers

[radio static crackles]

All right.

Hey guys, saying It's Alive

with a real fun four-part mini series, My Backyard,

doing a little outdoor cooking by the barn.

We're gonna do a little burger blend.

We got the boats and we're gonna do a little squid fishing,

seeing a mushroom farm, smoking some mushrooms.

Finally, we'll be doing some ramp forging

and a little ramp pizza party back at my house

with Chrissy and Sam.

Tune in bon appetit.

[bird squawking]

Quiet on set.

That bird he's making a nest up there.

Making a racket every day,

but I kind of like him.

I named him Pete.

[bird squawks]

[upbeat music]

That's not Pete.

Hey guys saying It's Alive.

We're gonna be doing one of my favorite things,

making some burgers at home.

And yeah, we're gonna be grinding our own meat.

We got three different types,

my own little special blend, little Brad's blend.

And then we're going to smoke 'em and sear 'em

and cook them on the Traeger.

All right, so I got my meat grinder here.

You can use, you know I was thinking about using,

I got one of them old hand ones, you know?

The old timer ones, I love those.

I took that it has a metal attachment

where it has the grinder and the auger and the tray

and I popped it in the freezer

for a couple minutes and get it cold, you know?

Every little step away in grinding meat.

You just want things cold.

As you know, as you're grinding and doing anything

that's friction, you're going to cause heat.

So you want things cold

and you want to maintain that, right?

But this blend is special to me.

Got a little bit of briskets, a little bit of lamb shoulder,

and then we got the lean and mean protein.

This is just a little bit of venison

that I got from my buddy Vinny.

All right.

There's not much if any fat in there.

Great flavor, it's a great protein.

One of my favorites.

And I think just makes a really nice blend all together.

And you could use any type of meat you want.

You know, you can use all beef, all lamb

[computer error tone]

[keyboard clicking]

You can use any kind of meat, like I was saying

with the venison, I feel like it's one of those things,

A: it's lean, but it's delicious.

A lot of folks don't know what to do with it.

You know, the obvious thing and the easiest thing

for the most part is grind it up.

You make your burger meat, you make your stew meat.

You know, most burger, whether you're getting it

in a patty form or just at ground beef at a counter,

it's usually, you know, beef chuck, or they mix it.

It's scraps, you know?

And that's great, I don't say that as a bad thing,

but it's usually just, you know,

scraps from the butchery process,

a great way to utilize extra pieces of cuts like that.

Hold on guys, I gotta get something.

[chuckles]

Think you're slick Kev-o.

You gotta keep an eye on me, pal.

I'll come out of the tree next time.

I like to be able to grind my own, you know?

There's an accountability to it.

See what goes into the sausage?

You know the old saying,

you don't want to see how the sausage is made.

Well I do, I do a hundred percent.

[electronic sci-fi music]

[Robot Voiceover] You really don't want

to see how the sausage is made.

Trust me.

You don't wanna just go throwing nasty bits in there.

You know, it's, you are what you eat here, a burger.

So at this point, what I'm doing is cubing the meat

up into little, little, little chunks like that.

Like something you'd see in stew.

And the reason we're doing that is so

that we can fit it through the grinder, right?

The lamb has a nice piece of fat on it.

And that's what we're going to pick up.

that like, kind of like that happy ratio,

that 80, 20 you know, a 75.

I'm not building rocket engines here.

I don't need to go way in the fat.

If you wanted to, hey to each your own.

You want to geek out and do it and make it nice,

so you can recreate it exactly the same, then yeah.

You know I tend to just do like little one-off miracles.

[organ music]

I'm gonna go pop this in the freezer.

We're gonna let it cool down.

Like I said, we're not turning in into meat ice cubes,

just getting a cold so that it stays cold

when we run it through the grinder.

[bird squawks]

Oh, it's getting warm huh?

Oh!

Kevin, I gotta put a bell on you Kev.

[bell ringing]

Oh I put it, who did that?

[lounge music]

Hot!

I also went down to a local metal shop, you know,

steelwork kind of place.

And they cut me a nice quarter inch

or three eighths, stainless steel, all right?

Nice, cleaned it up.

And that's going to be also my little smash

kind of sear pad.

[chimes twinkling]

All right, let's make our mixture.

And I got a half a cup of white miso.

Okay, right into the bowl.

You can use red miso or no miso if you want,

this is just how I, this is like,

some people are going to be like,

oh Brad, you're not making hamburgers anymore.

Look at all the stuff you're putting in it.

You're making sausages, right?

Call it whatever you want.

I'm calling it a burger with Brad's spice blend in it.

All right, so we've got half a cup of miso.

I got a little bit of herbs de Provence,

which has rosemary, thyme, oregano.

I think that different regions, different areas,

different families, and lavender.

This is a little kimchi juice, all right?

Stay with me there.

Pour that right in there.

A couple of tablespoons, okay?

And this is a little bit of ground cumin.

It goes really nice with meat.

I mean, obviously goes really great with lamb

and just, you know, little subtleties.

I don't need it to be overpowering,

but just a little bit of flavor within the meat.

So kimchi juice, totally optional.

You can put sauerkraut juice in it.

You can put wine, you can put water.

You could put nothing.

Terrible day for black shirt.

[blues music]

God, it's so warm.

Okay, little onion powder, all right?

I love onion and garlic powder.

I'm gonna start making my own but,

[bird squawks]

for now, have a nice,

[bird squawks]

That guy's making a racket.

He likes the show.

Oh god.

A little bit of onion powder, all right?

Like a teaspoon, okay?

Same with the garlic.

We'll go two teaspoons.

I like the garlic that goes nice in there.

Okay beautiful.

And we'll do a little pinch of salt,

about a teaspoon.

About two.

Let's do three.

I tried doing this with some raw garlic just minced up.

Worked really well, but it was like super, super powerful.

So I like to keep my spices around

because once we make the complete mixture,

I like to take a little one just like sausage right?

I like to take a little one and just do a little taster.

See that we're dialed in.

I'll be right back.

God, it so warm.

[Sports Announcer] He takes the snap.

He's at the fifteen.

The twelve, the ten, the five.

Kevin!

Let's go the meat waits for no one, pal.

Watch your back.

We'll see you going now.

Ooh ice pack between the legs.

So I put this in the freezer too,

get it real nice and cold.

Like I was saying, every step of the way,

cold, cold, cold, nice.

Got our little plunger, okay.

In here we got our, I'll show you,

I'll just show you real quick.

All right, in case you guys never used one of these.

Well, if you buy one, you just follow the instructions.

Okay, let me ditch the glasses.

[glass shatters]

Little worm drive pushes the meat through.

This cuts it, right?

And this makes it come out like, like a spaghetti.

Nice, okay.

Come on, we got our meat nice and cold.

Shit, shit.

[whistle blows]

[Sports Announcer] Delay of game.

Five yard penalty.

[grunts]

[wood thuds]

So we're going to take half of the mixture.

Just kind of rub it on it.

I don't want you to be like, oh my god

that's a garlic onion miso sausage patty burger.

No, no, no.

I just wanted to, to flirt with the palette a little.

Maybe even keep you guessing,

but I don't want to go mixing it crazy with my hands.

I want to kind of try to let the mixer do most,

the grinder do a lot of it.

Let's see how this works.

I hope it works.

Well hello, a little bit of lamb,

little bit of beef, a little bit of venison.

Yeah Bubba.

[metal grinding]

Right, how good does that look?

All right beautiful.

This is my little tester.

We're going to do a little tester.

Is that a bad idea guys?

Tester?

Yeah Bubba.

Little salt on there.

Yeah, let's close that for a sec.

All right, turn that up just a skosh.

I'm going to put it to 430, all right?

I think that's going to be the sweet spot.

You know, we're using the Traeger Ironwood 885.

And the reason I love using Traeger's man is because,

A: yeah, it's smoking, right?

And it uses these really cool,

I had some friends over here the other day and they're like,

Oh, you can't be cooking on wood pellets.

And I'm like, Pump the brakes pal.

What's cool, 'cause I talked with the folks over

at Traeger because I wanted to know, I was curious,

I was like, how are you getting that to bind.

The pressure it makes the sugar is the natural binder.

And you can pick hickory, cherry, apple,

little blends, mesquite, whatever you want.

So, you know, I got in here today,

we got a little bit of apple.

I like apple.

I like a good tool that works, man.

That's all I can say about that.

[Announcer] Traeger Nation!

All right, let's taste this little sampler.

See where we're at here.

Oh my god.

[audience gasps]

So good.

[feel good music]

[crowd applauds]

Hamburgers are so cool.

I like to kind of have the granularness of it,

and I make just little, little balls like that, all right?

My favorite way to cook a burger is to kind of put it

on that flat there, that I kind of smash.

I don't need it to be super thin,

but just kind of mushed down,

we're getting a nice little surface area.

Even if you don't have the stainless,

you can do them right on the grates, no problem.

You're getting the same heat.

That same smokiness is gonna wrap it around it.

It's just a beautiful thing.

And then as far as fixings, all right, I'm kind of classic.

I don't need a lot of stuff on there.

I don't need onion rings

and whatever else people are putting on there.

Frig knows, you know?

I want a burger I can bite into an eat, that it's not,

I don't need something like this with 25 patties on it.

To each their own.

Put a cheese on a little bit.

I think it's like in the cheddar family,

it had a name I couldn't pronounce it remember,

but it smells delicious.

Just like a nice melty white cheese.

I'm not a big American cheese guy.

So as far as what I'm gonna put on my burger,

I just got some, some pickles, gotta have pickles on there,

a little bit of pickled onions,

and then I just got some local ramps.

Which is kind of like a wild, if you're not familiar,

it's like a wild leek,

kind of garlic scallion-y kind of thing.

There's a whole bulb on the bottom,

but they take a long time to reproduce.

So I tend to leave the bulbs in the dirt,

but the leaves are beautiful,

and I'm just going to chop them up

and kind of use it as like a little bit of a,

like a lettuce or like an arugula.

And you know, I like to put it on the top and the bottom.

[Audience] Ooh!

What you know about that?

Eating something like that with wild vegetation

that that deer lives around, pretty cool.

And I know not everyone has the ability to get access

to really awesome meat like that.

But if you can, man, it's worth it.

It's just so much better than, than most

of the stuff you can get in a supermarket.

If it was in the middle of August or something,

and there were some beautiful tomatoes around,

you bet I'm putting them on there, right?

I'm just going to kind of stick with this.

It's what I got.

Onion.

Between the meat that we use,

the varieties of meat that we use,

and then all the flavoring agents that we put in there,

the miso, the cumin the herbs de Provence,

all that little subtleties, I want to taste that.

I don't want to hide that, you know?

If my kid was here, we'd be putting ketchup on it.

You stay here Kev.

[dramatic marching band music]

[Sports Announcer] He takes the hand off.

It's a reverse.

He's at the 15.

He's down.

[glass shatters]

Ah Mother [beep]

I had a glass.

I don't know where we got 'em.

Broken glass everywhere.

All right, let's have some burgers huh guys?

I'm gonna hit it with just a little bit of salt

because grilled smoked meat, you know, off any,

it always needs a little salt.

A little bit of black pep.

Yeah, come on.

Everybody's getting a burger today.

I'm like the Oprah of the burger world.

You get a burger, you get a burger!

Not you.

[lawn mower humming]

Let's see what happens.

Oh, they're so good you got to have two,

or three.

Perfect little pickle, little onion, the ramp leaf.

[smacks lips]

[glass shatters]

Besides the different flavors that come

from the three meats that are in there,

having the miso in there and the smokiness from the Traeger,

just kind of kissing all over the outside there.

It's just really, for me, it's just kind of a burger

that I can feel good about eating.

You know, I could eat one,

I could probably eat two of these and like,

not feel like I need to take a nap, you know?

And I know where all the meat came from,

all the products came from, the traceability

and the accountability of the product, you know?

It's something I feel good about eating

and supporting local farmers.

That's just, you know, that's important to me.

All right guys, that's my burger blend.

Thanks for hanging out with me here in my backyard.

We smoked them on the Traeger.

We ground them together.

We talked about different meats together.

It was a blast.

Thanks for hanging out.

We'll see you next time guys.

Bon appetit.

Hamburgers are so cool.

Anytime I make a bunch of hamburgers,

I always feel, I think he was from Popeye the Sailor Man,

the Hamburglar, right?

What'd you say?

[Kevin] That's McDonald's.

[Man] His name is Wimpy.

Oh yeah.

Not the Hamburglar that was Burger King, wasn't it?

[Man] McDonald's

It was McDonald's?

Wimpy, but he always said,

I'll gladly pay you for a eat a burger today for,

or he said something silly like that.

I'll pay you tomorrow for a burger today,

or something like that.

That guy was a legend.

Always carrying around this tray of burgers.

That's what I feel like when I make a lot of burgers.

I love it.

[suspenseful music]

Ocean's so scary Kevin,

Especially at night.

But could you imagine falling in this water now?

You think that's squid?

I got one.

Jesus Christ!

[slow motion yelling]

Rad.

[screams] [water splashing]

I ain't dying here.

I'll say don't get on board.

[suspenseful music]

It was the wrong jig this time pal.

[upbeat lounge music]