Griffin is back, and this time he's creating the "Super Aussie Burger". For those of you who aren't familiar with the Aussie Burger from Hungry Jacks, it's pretty much a Hungry Jacks Whopper with Bacon, Egg and Beetroot. After his first attempt at the
Super Whopper, he figured this one needed thinner patties, but more of them, and a bit of extra sauce. $58 later, he had half a kilo of bacon, half a kilo of cheese, six eggs, lettuce, 3 tomatoes, an onion, beetroot, sesame seeds, mustard and ketchup, and 4kg of mince from Fine Freddys' Meats. The time had come to create the Ultimate Aussie Burger, the Super Aussie Burger!
From: http://www.otca.com.au/burger2.html
One of the problems with the first Giant Burger was the huge lump of 'meatloaf' inside the bread and salad, which was just too thick and boring to look at and eat. If I wanted to do burger greater than 5kg, the meat had to be in multiple, thinner patties. Choosing the Aussie Burger as the next template, I went to the Sunnybank HJs on the 19th March, and ordered 2 Aussie Burgers, with double beef, double cheese and mustard. The mustard was to allow me to add an extra element of flavour and having extra sauce makes the large mass of (dry) meat easier to eat.
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To see what a normal Aussie Burger looks like, go to the Hungry Jacks Website.
Okay, here's a photo of one of the burgers I ordered.
Aussie Burger ingredients - Bread (with sesame seeds), meat, cheese, bacon, egg, beetroot, tomato, lettuce, onion, tomato ketchup. My Giant Burger would have mustard added, and some flavourings to the meat. I had actually bought the damper bread roll on about the 13th (from Woolworths again) and put it in the freezer until I was ready to want to do a second burger (the first one was a lot of work, and I had to eat 3/4 of it over 3 days before it went off - which isn't much fun after the first day). The rest of the items in the photo below were bought Thursday 20th. I bought half a kilo of bacon, half a kilo of cheese, six eggs, lettuce, 3 tomatoes, an onion, beetroot, sesame seeds, mustard and ketchup, from Coles, the 4kg of mince from Fine Freddys' Meats again, and flavourings from my own kitchen. Total cost of the items bought was about $58. I bought sesame seeds to try to make the burger look a little closer to a HJs burger, which have sesame seeds on their rolls. Somehow I would have to make the seeds stick to my bread roll and stay there throughout the cooking process.
Construction began the morning of Friday 22nd (my first full day away from my place of employment for 5 weeks).
Bread was cut in half and toasted thoroughly this time, because it went a bit soggy on the edges when thawed out. It actually gave the bread better texture, and strength to hold the burger together, so will keep that in mind in future. In the photo above you can see that this second bread roll had a lot of flour 'dusted' on the top, so I scraped most of it off with a knife and used a damp cloth to wipe as much off as possible. I then sprinkled the sesame seeds on, and most of them stuck to the slightly damp surface, even after it was then toasted in the photo below.
I decided to cook the meat last, so cooked up the other items first. One lot of Bacon:
Half of the Eggs and bacon:
I next started cooking half of the meat, in a thinner patty, but the same diameter as the first Giant Burger. As a bit of an experiment, I mixed sweet chilli marinade into the meat of the first patty, and curry powder into the meat of the second patty. The sweet chilli one ended up being very tasty, while the curry one wasn't as good, but still edible because it was very mild. While this first patty one was slow-cooking...
...I started work on the burger. To break up the 'dry meat' as much as possible, I put down a layer of cheese and sauces first.
When the first patty was ready about an hour later, I messed up with removing it from the electric frypan (not being careful enough with the much thinner patty), and parts of the edge broke off. It was cooked perfectly though, right through with a small bit of crunchy outering like HJs flame-grilled patties.
As the second patty was slow-cooking, I added another layer of cheese and sauces, plus half of the bacon.
I was more careful removing the second patty and placing it on the burger intact.
The rest of the cheese, sauces and the rest of the bacon.
The six eggs, more sauce, and onion.
Next up was the tin of beetroot and three tomatoes (wasn't too happy with the Coles tomatoes being hard and green inside, but that's expected from supermarket chains that artificially ripen hard green tomatoes to give them a longer shelf life and limit bruising).
Finally the lettuce.
And capped off with the top of the bread roll. So much for going to all that effort with the sesame seeds - they don't even show up in the photo. Stepping in again as the role of unbiased observer and recorder is Mr Optimus Prime. He measured the completed burger at 29cm diameter and 21cm tall.
And the weight - unofficially, just over 6kg. (scale reads 6.5kg, but the black tray is 470gm) In case the scales round up to nearest 0.1kg (from 0.05kg), the burger would at least be officially 5.9kg.
Cut open to show the inside. The meat still looks a bit thick, but at least it is broken up with other fillings this time
And next to a softdrink can, for scale (taken a day later - I forgot to buy a softdrink can again with the rest of the stuff, so had to get one the next day).
The Super Aussie Burger next to a real Aussie Burger. It looks like a mini-burger, but is actually HJs biggest menu burger.
A comparisson of the burgers cut open.
And as a 'HJs value meal'. Mmm, yummy. Wait a sec, someone's pinching my fries...
I had thought that the thinner meat patties on this burger would make it quicker to make than the prototype burger, but actually took over 3 hours this time, compared to about 2 hours of the first one. It's still gonna take me about 3-4 days to eat it all though. before it goes off, and then it's diet time again...
Next up in the next few months, will be a Super Bacon Deluxe. I may even divide the meat up into three parts this time, to give more layering on a burger that doesn't have as many ingredients on it as the Aussie Burger. Doesn't mean I can't add a few extra items though, because you can always custom build or modify any of HJs burgers. But I will only do the next one for other people at work, otherwise, I would just stop at two, just because I don't like having to consume all this food in a short period of time to prevent wasting it. The project is fun to do during the creative process, but the eating part (and later dieting) isn't.