 |
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
What would Independence Day be without grilling, right? (Answer: It would still be Independence Day, but with worse food.) Well, my friend Elise and I were coming up with ideas for Fourth of July on her site, Simply Recipes, when we decided to do a traditional mushroom burger – you know, the one with lots of sauteed mushrooms, onions and Swiss cheese on top? You’ve seen it on the menu in pretty much every burger joint in America.
We sexed up our version with ground, dried porcini mixed into the burger meat. This made the burger even more of an umami bomb. Juicy, savory and super-mushroomy. I had to export this idea here, to Wild Game Land.
Turns out it was easy. Just use ground venison instead of beef, and use wild mushrooms. Holly and I had been morel mushroom hunting a few days before, so I had a few morels lying around. I know, poor me, right? And I had a few dried morels from last year that needed to be eaten. Again, I know you’re all weeping for me. So I decided to make a venison-morel burger, a riff off my normal go-to recipe for venison burgers.
I prefer my burgers grilled, so that’s how I cooked mine, but you can cook your meat any way you’d like. I also prefer my burgers without pretense; thus the Pabst Blue Ribbon in a can sitting behind the burger. Then I was informed that, due to about some odd wrinkle in the time-space continuum, Pabst has become associated with hipsters. Huh?! Damnit, this was a workingman’s beer I grew up with; there was a Pabst brewery near my house in Jersey growing up. I refuse to wear skinny jeans and talk endlessly about how I knew this obscure band waaay before you did while drinking my Pabst.
But I will continue to drink Pabst on hot days, with a hamburger. This burger, in fact. It’s everything you want in a mushroom burger, only wild.
Photo by Holly A. Heyser
venison and mushroom burgers
This is a wild game version of the classic mushroom burger you see in hamburger joints all over the country: A big ole’ meat patty, topped with grilled or sauteed onions and mushrooms, served with cheese, usually Swiss. Mustard is the traditional accompaniment here, but no babies will die if you use ketchup, too. What makes my version of a mushroom burger different — other than using venison and wild mushrooms — is that I add ground, dried mushrooms into the meat mixture to get a stronger mushroom flavor.
Use any wild or domestic mushrooms, and you don’t have to use the same one in the meat mix as you do in the saute. Dried porcini are the best, though, and they are available at many supermarkets, or you can buy them online through places like Earthy Delights. As for the fresh mushrooms, buttons are fine here, but use anything you’d want to eat with a burger: morels, porcini, wild agaricus, black trumpets, oyster mushrooms, etc — that “chef’s sampler” you can get in some markets is a good choice.
Serves 6.
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
- 2 pounds ground venison
- 20 grams dried morels or other mushrooms, about 5/8 ounce or 3 tablespoons once ground
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 tablespoon dried thyme
- 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
- 12 ounces fresh morels or other mushrooms, chopped
- 1 medium onion, sliced thin into half-moons
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- Hamburger buns
- 6 slices of Swiss or Provolone cheese
- Mustard
- Grind the dried mushrooms to a powder in a coffee grinder. This may take a bit of doing, and if you have any big pieces left over you can use them for something else, or you can add them to the meat mix and let the meat sit in the fridge for several hours — the moisture from the meat will rehydrate the pieces and you won’t then be crunching on them in the burger.
- Mix into the meat the dried mushroom powder, celery seed, salt and thyme. It doesn’t have to be uniformly mixed in. Shape the meat into patties. When you do this, don’t overwork your meat or your hamburgers will become tough and chewy. Crumbly is better than tough, to my mind. Also, press a little indentation into the center of each patty: This helps the patty keep its shape once cooked, because when meat cooks it tightens up and will turn into a ball shape if you don’t have that indentation.
- Get a large saute pan hot over high heat and add the mushrooms. Shake the pan frequently so they don’t all stick, and cook the mushrooms until they release their water, about 2-4 minutes. As soon as the water has mostly bubbled away, add the olive oil and the sliced onion and saute until everything has nicely browned, about 6-8 minutes. Turn off the heat and set aside.
- Grill your burgers (or cook them in any other way) to your liking. I like mine medium, so I grill over medium-high heat about 6-8 minutes per side. I only flip my burgers once. When you flip the burger, let it cook about halfway on the second side before slapping a slice of cheese on the patty. Close the grill lid to let it melt.
- To build the burger, toast the buns if you want first. Paint with mustard or whatever, then lay down a patty. Top with the mushrooms and onions and have at it! Serve with a salad and a cold beer.
Buy Fresh and Dried Mushrooms Online:
Try a two-to-one ratio of ground elk to ground pork. It’s the best burger I’ve ever had. Sadly, I’m out of ground pork until I raise some more pigs, but it’s going to be on the menu again as soon as I do.
Looks super good Hank!
Cheers
pw
Burgers + mushrooms + Swiss cheese = nirvana. Add ground mushrooms and you could really push me right over the edge! Speaking of beer, when you come back east on your book tour, you should give Yeungling lager a try. It’s my personal favorite, pretty much unknown west of the Mississippi. Clean, crisp, full bodied with no bitterness. A lager and a burger is about as blissful as it gets!
Jules: I did 3:1 venison to pork fat. I actually think the 2:1 ratio is – gasp! – too fatty for me. I went with 1 1/2 pounds venison to 1/2 pound pork fat.
Thanks, Patricio!
Tina: I am very familiar with Yuengling’s beer. Drank more than my share of it in Delaware, DC and Pennsylvania…
I didn’t have any pork fat, so I just used bacon grease! Same thing, right?
Oh my goodness does that ever look good! I think that some fresh shiitakes would also be good with this burger… lots of flavour!
- Brittany
Zane: Nope, not the same thing at all. Bacon grease is fat that has already been rendered, so it will be slick and soft and will not integrate well with the venison. I always use unrendered pork, beef or lamb fat when I’m grinding venison for burger or sausage. That said, it sounds like you used it and made the burgers anyway — how did they turn out?
Brittany: Yep, Shiitakes would be a good choice.
well, after a good turn in the mixer the meat was more like an emulsified sausage. Still, they formed good patties and did well on the grill. They weren’t dry, but since a lot of the grease just dripped out of the burger, you didn’t get the most fat flavor out of them you could of. Better than nothing but next time I’ll add in some unrendered fat.
Venison burgers? F##K yeah!!! That’s my kind of meat.
(that’s what she said)
Pickled onions (I believe the recipe is on this site) also go great on venison burgers. Looking forward to trying this recipe with the mushrooms.
Hank, that would be pretty fatty. I’m using ground pork from a rather lean pig that I raised myself, so it’s nowhere near as greasy as straight fat would be!
[...] Venison Burgers with Mushrooms – Hunter Angler Gardener Cook: It looks to be another beautiful weekend, so go ahead and try out this tasty looking recipe for venison burgers with mushrooms! [...]
I made venison burgers the other night, but first I took the meat and some thick sliced bacon and put it all through the grinder attachment on my mixer. Venison is pretty lean meat, and can be on the dry side. This made the venison about as fatty as beef, so the finished burgers were really juicy and delicious.
Hank,I fired up your burger recipe for the holiday. I ground the last of my venison along with fatback which brought it to 60/40. I also found your recipe for Angels on Horseback for appetizers. Put everything in the Traeger pellet grill. Everyone completely enjoyed your holiday burger suggestion.
My wife and I enjoyed this recipe. It’s almost too easy to make such a flavor filled burger.
I have made this 2 times but the second time i chopped up 4 slices of butchers bacon (half cooked) and mixed with 1 1/2 lbs venison and 1/2 lb ground beef. Added small crumbled blue cheese and mixed lightly. It made me want to push people away from the table and say there was none left. I know its a bunch of flavor but the bacon really brought the venison to the forefront. The beef was really just to hold the patties together while they grilled. I used broken pecan branches to lightly smoke for the 10 minutes over high heat that it took to just make my mouth water. Then served with some good cold Rolling Rock and roasted potatoes toasted with dill seasoning. Sorry i’m ranting but had to get the whole thing in here.