Buffalo Burger for dinner tonight, dinner tonight..... dinner to....

We recently discovered the availability of ground Bison either prepattied or in a one pound package. We love making burgers with it and find it very digestible, leaving us feeling much less stuffed than when we have beef burgers. (See the nutritional comparison chart at the end of this post.)

Another innovation that we've adopted is to put the cheese on the inside of the burger instead of on top. We learned about this on one of those Food Network shows. We call them Juicy Lucys or Outside In Burgers.

I often make Spicy Oven Fried Potatoes to go with the burgers. I always get the potatoes completely done before I put the burgers on to cook.

Outside-In Buffalo Cheese Burgers

Ingredients:

• 1to 1.5 pounds of ground Bison/Buffalo.
• 1 to 1.5 cups of shredded Sharp Cheddar Cheese or other flavorful cheese. I think Jalapeno Jack would be great.
• Salt, Freshly ground Black Pepper, Garlic powder.
• Burger Buns of you choice.

Procedure:

1. Portion out the burgers or defrost preformed patties .
2. Fold a piece of film wrap over both sides of the portion and flatten out to a pretty thin patty.
3. Sprinkle some of the seasonings on the up side of the patty and place a mound of the shredded cheese in the center.
4. Now bring up the edges of the patty to enclose the cheese and gently pinch together forming a ball again.
5. Bring the film up over the ball and re-flatten back to a nice size burger.
6. Season the outside of the final patty.
7. I Usually put the burgers into the freezer for about 20 minutes while I'm prepping the potatoes. This firms them up and makes them easier to handle when putting them onto the grill or into a pan.
   
8. Cook them on the grill or in a pan* when you are ready to.
   

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Spicy Oven Fried Potatoes

Ingredients:

• Yellow flesh potatoes
  
• Lots of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder, Ground Chili**,Ground Coriander, Celery Salt
• Juice of 1 Key lime or half a Persian Lime. If you don't have limes on hand a little vinegar or lemon juice can be used instead.

Procedure:

1. Put a sheet pan in the oven and preheat to 410 degrees. (Convection ovens work especially well for this. Set temp to 380 degrees for convection ovens.)
   
2. Cut potatoes into wedges.
3. Place the potato wedges into a large mixing bowl.
4. Add a liberal amount of the Extra Virgin Olive Oil and toss around. They should be well coated with the oil. (You can use Canola or some other oil if you want but in my kitchen E.V.O. rules)
   
5. Add all of the seasonings plus the lime juice. Sorry no measurements here. you just gotta use your instincts. Think BIG flavor. The only thing you want to be careful not to overdue is the salt. You can always add some when they are all done if you think it's needed.
6. Toss all this very thoroughly.
7. Very carefully remove the very hot sheet pan from the oven. Sprinkle some more olive oil into the pan then dump on the potatoes . Spread out the potato wedges to a single layer.
8. Put the pan back into the oven.
   
9. Once you see the potatoes begin to sizzle a bit you can pull the pan out briefly to move the wedges around and rearrange them a bit. You'll be doing this about every 10 minutes until they are done. Each time you rearrange them make sure all sides of the wedges have a chance to be flat against the pan surface. This will assure even browning.
10. Continue cooking them in this way until the look very crispy. Near the end of cooking you may want to switch over to the broiler mode to crisp them up. Be careful not to forget about them. I usually stand right there to keep an eye. Not everybody likes burnt edges.
    

(The bottle of Guinness Stout that you see in the middle picture goes into the cook not on the potatoes.)

*On this particular night I char grilled the burgers but I often pan grill them in a good skillet on the stove. I think they come out juicier from the pan. The downside is that your stove is a filthy mess when you are done.

** I've been buying this particular brand of 'mild' chili from Alejandro's Market in Tucson's South side. I doubt that it can be found in many places elsewhere.
It's the best I've ever come across. If anyone out there is interested I can ship some to you. It's a few bucks per 8oz container plus shipping.

NUTRITIONAL COMPARISON Bison to other meats Per 100 GRAM SERVING - COOKED MEAT

SPECIES	FAT GRAMS	CALORIES KCAL	CHOLESTEROL MG	IRON MG	VITAMIN B-12 MCG
Bison	2.42	143	82	3.42	2.86
Beef (choice)	18.54	283	87	2.72	2.50
Beef (select)	8.09	201	86	2.99	2.64
Pork	9.66	212	86	1.1	0.75
Chicken (skinless)	7.41	190	89	1.21	0.33
Sockeye Salmon	10.97	216	87	0.55	5.80