Knife Skills, Or the Lack Thereof

While making dinner tonight I learned yet again that years of constantly cutting the tip of my left thumb off has left said thumb essentially pain and blood free. You think I'm kidding, but I was chopping up bacon for my bacon cheeseburgers and I got a bit too close to my thumb. Whoopsie, there went the tip with a chunk of nail to go with it. No pain, no blood, just me pulling a big chunk of my DNA out of tonight's dinner. I've done it plenty of times before, particularly when peeling vegetables, but this was bigger than usual. I was kind of surprised to see that I didn't have to throw the bacon out due to added, unwanted plasma. Either I have to work on my knife skills, or eventually I'll lose all feeling in my fingers, thereby removing the need for better knife skills. Either way I win. My guests may lose as they pull random finger bits out of their cooking, but a free meal is a free meal. Luckily for them I wash my hands frequently while cooking.

Not being one to just gross you out and run, here's the recipe for the bacon cheeseburgers I was making, taken from Steven Raichlen's Indoor! Grilling.

1.5 lbs of ground beef
4 strips of thick cut bacon or 6 - 8 strips of thin cut (about 4 oz)
6 oz of smoked cheddar, shredded, about 1.5 cups
1 garlic clove, minced

1. Cook the bacon until crisp. Crumble or chop the cooked bacon.
2. In a large bowl, mix all of the ingredients together. You can use a wooden spoon, but I just get in there with my hands.
3. Form the resulting mixture into four equal patties about 3/4 inches thick and place the patties in the fridge for at least 20 minutes. This will keep them from falling apart on the grill.
4. Grill over direct medium heat for 8 minutes a side for well done. Due to the cheese in these burgers, they will flare up like a son of a bitch so you have to keep your eye on them and move them off the heat if necessary. The cheese also makes them super moist, so you can make them well done without risk of them drying out.

When finished, put 'em on a bun and top 'em with whatever pleases ye. We usually make a chipotle mayo which goes something like this, from the same recipe in Raichlen's book:

1/2 cup mayo
1 or 2 chipotle peppers + 1 Tbsp adobo sauce
1/2 tsp sweet paprika (you can use hot if you want, but I find that the resulting flavor is better with the sweet)

1. Mince the chipotle peppers.
2. Stir all ingredients together and let sit in the fridge for 20 minutes or so before slathering it on your burger or whatever you feel needs something slathered on it.

Enjoy!