Every Day Dorie – Beyond Umami

Umami Burger – Dorie Greenspan’s Everyday Dorie

Beyond Umami — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 03:39:00 +0000

Umami Burgers from Every Day Dorie

When I saw that the Cook the book fridays for today was the Umami Burger from Dorie Greenspan’s Every Day Dorie, I knew I had to make it. We subbed out our original Friday night cooking plan of bulgogi with rice cakes in favour of Dorie’s Umami burgers. This recipe has the name umami in it, how could I not make it? A quick look in the fridge indicated that we had a pack of mushrooms (clearly waiting to be used for this exact purpose) and some spinach. No gochujang sauce, but we had a bottle of spicy chili crisps. Frozen ground beef was found in the freezer, so we just had to defrost the meat and we were set!

Brioche Buns in the Oven

Seeing that we were having burgers for dinner, the hubby decided to make his own brioche buns. He started the baking process last night (Thursday) so he could bake them up after work for dinner.

The beginnings of the mushroom mix for Umami Burgers

The recipe is fairly simple with the bulk of the umami flavour coming from the 10-12 chopped mushrooms. We had brown crimini mushrooms so that is what I used for our Umami burgers.

Cooked down mushroom mix with sauce added

After the chopped mushrooms and red onion (vidalia) has cooked down (about 6 minutes), a sauce is added. Simply mix oyster sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, and in my case spicy chili crisp sauce. Go easy on the oyster sauce, as the sauce tends to be fairly salty for my taste. I also did not add more salt to the cooked mushrooms and onions as it felt adequately salted already. When the mushroom mix is cooked, place in a bowl and let it cool.

Forming the Umami Burger Patties

After our acupuncture appointment we came home and finished assembling the rest of dinner. Dorie does suggest that if you want additional mushroom flavour, you can mix the mushroom mix with the beef and let it sit in the fridge for a day. For us, we just mixed the beef and mushroom mix together and allowed it to marinate for around 10 minutes.

Cooking 4 Umami Burger Patties on a Cast Iron Pan

We did not make our burger patties as big as the ones in the cookbook; mainly because we wanted to match our patties to the brioche buns that Dan had made. We were surprised that there was no binder needed to keep the patties together. In the end that was not needed as long as we followed Dorie’s directions. Dorie suggests cooking the patties (on each side) for 4 minutes without moving them. Doing so provides a nice char and after 4 minutes you will be able to flip them. We cooked ours on medium to high heat on a cast iron pan.

Fresh Brioche Buns

The brioche buns that Dan made fit perfectly with the burgers. They were soft and fluffy and perfect for our Umami Burgers. We topped our burgers with a slice of smoked Balderson cheddar and spinach. So good! Later on I did add some mayo and grainy mustard to see how different flavours

Again a great savoury recipe from Dorie. We also really loved her Easy Salmon Burgers that we made a few years ago too!

I would highly recommend that make these Umami Burgers. They are found on page 140 of Every Day Dorie by Dorie Greenspan or here.

Cheesecake from Dorie Greenspan’s Every Day Dorie

Beyond Umami — Sun, 14 Mar 2021 22:23:00 +0000

Let’s continue following along with Cook the Book Fridays and cooking from Dorie Greenspan’s “Every Day Dorie”. This week’s was a Cheesecake. We had the option of using mandarin, tangerine or another citrus if we couldn’t find tangerines. I loved how quick it was for this cheesecake to come together. I must admit that I have never made a tangerine or mandarin flavour cheesecake before so this was a first. I was a bit sad that the cheesecake dropped a bit as it cooled in the oven and then the fridge (over 8 hours) but overall the cheesecake came out of the pan so well. I loved that the cheese cake was so simple. The flavour came mainly from the zesting of the mandarins into sugar and then slowly whisking together cream cheese, ricotta and eggs.

A slight layer of melted honey is slathered on top to give the cheesecake a shiny glaze. As you can see this cheesecake was quite large! Good thing there are many neighbours around us to help us eat all the food we experiment and create! We gave away a solid half of the cheesecake as Dorie says it feeds up to 16 servings!

Go check out the Cook the Book Fridays page to see how everyone else did! If you want to make this yourself, check out Dorie’s cookbook “Every Day Dorie” from amazon, chapters or wherever cookbooks can be purchased.

oh and before I forget here is a picture of the short ribs I made a few months ago for Cook the Book fridays and forgot to post it!!

Bean & Tortilla Soup – Every Day Dorie AND Blueberry-Buttermilk Bundt Cake

Beyond Umami — Sun, 25 Oct 2020 19:14:00 +0000

Hello, it has been a while! I have been updating my instagram, but between work starting again end of August, attending to all new COVID-protocols (while still doing my job as a Speech-Language Pathologist), pottery and getting ready for a puppy (YES! we are finally getting one)…life has been a touch busy! So today, I am finally getting back to my blogging and playing catch-up in my cooking through Dorie Greenspan’s Every Day Dorie with the “Cook the Book Fridays” bloggers! This past Friday it was the Bean & Tortilla Soup (Page 60). This soup is super easy to prep! Which was great since we chopped up all of the red onions, peppers, garlic, and carrots before we went for our flu shot, and then upon returning home we just threw it into the instant pot to saute.

In Dorie’s recipe, she suggests just heating up the beans (we used kidney beans), then spooning the amount you want into your bowl and then layering on the soup. Her recipe involves cooking over the stove-top. We sped up the process a touch by using our Instant Pot on the pressure cook mode for 5 minutes. To make the soup base we used the rest of the liquid from the kidney beans and water – as we realized while prepping the soup that we had run out of chicken stock.

Finally, the toppings! Dorie gives lots of great suggestions for toppings. She suggests reserving a bit of the red onions and peppers behind to add to your soup. Then, all the toppings are essentially everything I love about dips, but in soup form! Avocados, shredded cheese, yogurt/sour cream and finally tortillas! I might have over done my toppings a bit but this was such a great meal considering how cold it is getting here in Edmonton!

His (in the background) and Hers versions of the Bean & Tortilla Soup
in my wheel thrown bowls!

One addition is that next time, I would add more than 1tsp of adobo sauce; probably a good tablespoon of adobo sauce. This would add more smokiness to the soup which would help separate this soup from a minestrone soup and more towards a Bean & Tortilla soup. Dan did add in more adobo sauce to his soup later. Overall, a great soup to add to our soup rotations this Winter! Check out the Cook the Book Fridays page to see how everyone else did!

Finally, one more picture to add to my catching up of Every Day Dorie is this Blueberry-Buttermilk Bundt Cake! This one is a keeper! It was so good, I made it twice! Each time, we wisely cut up a good half of the bundt cake and shared it with our neighbours (individually wrapped of course!).

So so moist! The blueberries were so good in combination with the rest of the cake! The second time we made it, I used milkadamia milk using macadamian nuts (instead of buttermilk) and it still turned out great!

Easy Salmon Burgers from Every Day Dorie – Cook the Book Fridays

Beyond Umami — Fri, 12 Apr 2019 15:14:00 +0000

Hello, it is Cook the Book Fridays! What does this mean? It means that I get to show you some process photos for a recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Everyday Dorie. This month brings us to page 174 from the cookbook – Salmon Burgers.

Last week, after my clay class I was walking around an area in Ottawa that was, of course, new to me called Wellington. I was actually looking for a place to eat lunch. At one point I looked up (it was a super windy day) and saw that I was in front of a store called Sas Love’s Meat Market. After looking around, I realized that they not only sold meat products but salmon as well. I purchased about half the amount of salmon that the recipe calls; which ended up making 4 sizeable salmon burgers.

I am so happy that I chanced upon a local produce shop. Sourcing good quality salmon seemed to help the flavour profile of the salmon burgers. I found that even without a binding agent the salmon patty held together quite well for ours.

After drying the salmon fillets, Dorie says to pulse them just a few times in a food processor. We cut ours into equal smaller chunks and then only pulsed the salmon 4 times for fear of over pulsing! This seemed to ensure that the salmon meat was a good consistency.

As we only had balkan style yogurt in the fridge, I used that in putting together the salmon burgers. The rest of the ingredients were about 2 stalks of roughly chopped dill, 1/4 cup balkan yogurt, zest from half a lemon, 2 tablespoons of cut capers, handful of cut scallions, and 2 tablespoons of grainy mustard.

Next, we gently mixed the sauce into the processed salmon, but didn’t over do this part. We then chilled our mixture in the fridge for 2 hours while we went to work out.

Since I had cut the down the recipe by half, we ended up making 4 reasonably sized salmon burgers. Using gloves seemed to help in shaping the burgers so that the salmon pieces didn’t stick to our hands.

To cook, we turned the heat for the cast-iron pan to medium-high. Then once the pan was hot, we turned the heat down to medium and cooked the burgers for 3 minutes each side. This seemed to be just the right amount of time and heat needed to cook the burgers through but still leaving the inside moist.

We had our salmon burgers on top of salad! Though, Dan also added soba noodles to his for more sustenance.

We found that this salmon burger recipe was super easy to put together once you had all the ingredients. Dan loved the salmon burgers and thinks that we should add them to our food rotation in order to have more fish in our meals. I am also wondering if the sauce would do well just layered on top of the salmon fillets and then baked for an even easier dinner prep and meal!

Oh and after quick search, I found the recipe for these salmon burgers here. Also check out the Cook the Book Fridays page to see how everyone else did with this recipe!