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You don’t beat Josh Ozersky, the New Yorker who wrote the book on The Hamburger, at his own game. So when Richard Turner invited Fred Smith and I to compete against Josh in a NYLon Burger-Off at the Meatopia UK Meat Festival in September we agreed the only way to go was British.
British Beef
One advantage of British grass-fed beef over American grain-fed is the distinctive flavour of each cut. Rather than blend two or more cuts into our patties and blur some of what makes each different Fred and I had a thought: If you could have a single malt Scotch, a single origin coffee or a single varietal Champagne why not a single cut burger?
Fred set up a blind tasting at Byron, where he is Head of Food. We tried four patties each made from a different cut of the finest dry-aged Scottish beef from the London meat merchants Turner & George. The revelation was just how different the flavour of each patty was. The single cut patties preserved the individual character of their respective cuts. Each was a singular sensation.
British Cheese & British Sauce
Fred created a homemade 100% British burger cheese that would melt like American plastic burger cheese but taste like classic Welsh rarebit, the umami-rich cheese sauce traditionally poured over toast. The burger sauce was effectively in his cheese.
British Bun
From Flourish Craft Bakery we found a lovely English muffin with wonderful “squeeze” yet enough oomph to stand up to the beefy juices and cheesy ooze.
British Win
At the NYLon burger-off #TheSingleCut killed in two ways: It killed Josh, whose forceful first bite of our British burger spurt fatty juices into the crowd and drew a chorus of gasps, and it killed those tortured carnivores who followed the action but didn’t get so much as a nibble. Not wanting this to be remembered as one big tease we vowed to bring back the #SingleCut for a single night before the end of the year.
That night is BurgerMonday the 2nd of December.
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