Monday, March 8, 2021

Blue Cheese Burger with Deep Fried Asparagus

 [FTC Standard Disclosure] I received a package full of Bertolino Foods products as a thank you for some of the posts I have done about their shaved steak. No money exchanged hands and I'm under no obligation to post this. 

Last week I was happy to find a cooler full of Bertolino Foods beef products on my doorstep. It was loaded with their shaved steak and several of their gourmet burger patties. There were many varieties of burger patties and this weekend I decided to try their blue cheese burgers.

Typically, you'll see these on a menu or recipe as "black and blue" burgers but I wanted to try something a little different. I wanted something that reminded me of a wonderful steakhouse burger and came up with this...

Gourmet blue cheese burger with deep fried asparagus
Gourmet Blue Cheese Burger with deep-fried asparagus and dijon-mayo on a brioche bun.

We freaking LOVE crispy, deep-fried asparagus as a side so why not put it on a burger, right? They were fantastic. It had the delicious flavor of blue cheese, the crunch of the asparagus, and the rich dijon-mayo brought it all together. 

This was pretty straightforward, here is what we did, starting with the asparagus.

Deep-Fried Asparagus

www.nibblemethis.com

Published 03/08/2021

Crispy, delicious, and a little bit spicy, these appetizers are amazing. We like to serve them with honey-mustard or fire-roasted poblano ranch dipping sauce on the side.

Ingredients

  • 1 bundle asparagus, bottoms snapped off
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/4 cup finely grated parmesan
  • 2 tablespoons NMT Beef Rub v.2 recipe or another steak seasoning.
  • 3 large eggs

Instructions

  1. Preheat a deep-fryer to 350°f.
  2. Season the flour. Mix the flour, parmesan cheese, and beef rub together on a plate.
  3. Make the egg wash. Beat the three eggs together in a dish that is big enough for dipping the asparagus. 
  4. Bread the asparagus. Dip the asparagus in the egg wash, then the flour mix, back in the egg wash and then back in the flour mix. Set on a wire rack and repeat for remaining pieces.
  5. Deep fry the asparagus. Work in small batches. Deep-fry the asparagus until golden brown, 2-3 minutes.

Yield: 4 appetizer servings

Prep Time: 00 hrs. 30 mins.

Cook time: 00 hrs. 10 mins.

Total time: 40 mins.

Tags: appetizer

How I deep fry asparagus
We like to double-dip our asparagus in flour.  We've done it in flour than bread crumbs but for us, we like them better when coated only in seasoned flour/parm mix.

The frying part goes quickly, so we prefer to get all of the asparagus ready to fry before starting the first batch.

Normally, we do a spicy ranch or honey mustard dipping sauce with the asparagus but I wanted that to double as a condiment for a burger. I made a simple dijon-mayo that worked excellently. 

1/2 cup Duke's mayonnaise
1/4 cup dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Whisk it all together.

Bertolino Blue Cheese Gourmet Burger patties are loaded with flavor.
Cooking the burgers was easy, all of the hard work was done.

This recipe would work on any grill. Today I used one of my large Big Green Eggs with a cast-iron grate from Craycort

We used brioche buns and of course, I toasted them on the grill first.

I used Big Green Egg Brazilian lump charcoal and preheated the grill to 450°f. I cooked the burgers for about 3-4 minutes per side.

Grilling burgers on Craycort cast iron grates in a Big Green Egg kamado grill
I wanted maximum crust on my burgers so I used the griddle insert on the griddle insert for the Craycort cast iron grate. The accessory inserts that work with this grate system give you a ton of flexibility in your grilling setups.

Blue cheese burger with deep fried asparagus
The results were amazing - so much flavor and variety of textures. I could also see adding an egg to this combination or maybe bearnaise sauce.

Have a great week!