Okay folks today we just want to welcome you back to Mr. Cast Iron and we're
gonna be making a smash burger with onions and but first of all I want to
show you a new gift that Teresa bought me this is a Lodge rectangular cast iron
grill press and what we're going to use this for is to press the hamburgers down
real flat to make our smash burgers now I've already unpackaged this but I want
to show you how easily this is to put together. Here's, once you open it up, there's instructions
here. It's very simple, actually. There's a spiral handle, and that is heat-resistant handle
It's got two flathead screws, and then there's two flat washers, and then there's two nuts
So all you really have to do to this is come in from the bottom, place your screw in there like
that place your handle on top add your flat washer to it and then you come down
and you put your nut on there and then you repeat the process over here on the second one like that
and then once you get it bolted down and tightened up what you want to do with one of these grill
presses is basically just rinse it off and dry it real good anytime you're done with it you want to
hand wash it, dry it, and then lightly oil it, put it away for the next time. So we're going to do
that now and we'll be back in just a second. Okay, well, we're going to go ahead and get our onions
ready to make our smash burgers with onions and I've got this neat little pampered chef
mandolin that Teresa bought me. Now it's sharp so you got to be careful with this, but what we're
going to do we going to shave these onions very thin so they will caramelize on our cast iron griddle once we start the smash burgers Now it just a razor blade here that you got to adjust the thickness of what you want here
There's a lock where it's locked, and then you've got a step one, step two, and a step three on thickness
We're going to go to number one because we want our onions very, very thinly sliced
Also, this Pampered Chef mandolin comes with a little tool here. It looks like a little handle that basically when you pull it back like that
it has four prongs where you can, you know, poke it into your onion or a tomato
whatever you're slicing, and that way you'll keep your hands away from the razor blade
But I'm not going to get down that far, but I just want to show you how this works
We're going to go ahead and shave our onions now. like I said I've got it on number one so we're just going to slide this across this razor blade
and thinly slice our onions and once you get to that point right there you could take
and just keep your hands away from that razor blade like that right there
So we're going to go ahead we're going to finish shaving our onions and we'll be back here in a
minute we'll begin to make our hamburgers and we'll show you how we make smash burgers. Okay
Well, I've got my ground beef balled up. It's about the size of a tennis ball. And what we want to do now, we've got a cast iron
large cast iron grill griddle on our gas stove that we're going to be cooking these on today
So what you need to really do is basically just set those out here
And we're going to take our salt and pepper, add a little bit of that to it. Then I'm going to take some of my onions and just place on top here
and then we going to take our grill press and we just going to press our burger press and just press that down Just like that right there Press it down to about a quarter inch thick and we going to let that begin to char up And as soon as we get char around the outside edge we go ahead
and we'll flip that over and we'll grill the other side. But just to kind of give you a little brief
history about Oklahoma onion burgers or some people call them smash burgers or whatever
But back during the Depression of 1929 to the period of 1939 was what was called the Great Depression
And a lot of people had trouble getting ground beef and hamburger meat and things like that
But onions were very plentiful. And so what folks would do, they would take their onions and mix with their hamburger meat to help add more meat to the meal so they could feed more people with it
And that's kind of how that got started. And I don't know if it originally got started in Oklahoma
but I know in Ardmore, Oklahoma, that's where the Oklahoma Onion Burger comes from
And so that's basically kind of what we're doing, just a smash burger with onions
But as you can see, the onions will begin to caramelize around underneath the hamburger grease
And once we get a little char on the outside edge, we'll go ahead and we'll flip those
All right, well another thing I'm going to do is kind of steam my buns too
So I'm just going to kind of lay these on top of these while they're continuing to cook
and let those flavors from the hamburger grease and the onions flavor the buns
Now you can toast them if you like, but you don't necessarily have to
All right I got these flavored up I going to go ahead and toast them too before we done But I need to flip these burgers real quick Now Teresa asked me about the onions why we put them on top Now you
can do it either way, but this allows these onions to get in top of the hamburger meat
and be able to work down in the meat like that to flavor it
Actually, these are a little bigger than most people make, but that's okay
I like a big hamburger, so they're going to be just fine. We're going to make it work
Now, once you get them to this point here, you need to come back and salt these
Pepper them real good. Go ahead and add your cheese to it and let that be melting
Okay, we're going to go ahead and pull one of these. Turn our heat off
Go ahead and cut this. And there you have a smashed burger with onions
Now, I like mustard on mine. I didn't put any on it, but you can put any kind of topping
on your smash burgers. I mean, some people like pickles and tomatoes
and lettuce or whatever. I just like them just like they are
the old-fashioned way with just onions and cheese and ground beef and grilled buns
just like this. So anyway, we hope you guys enjoy this. We're going to get us a bite of it for lunch
and y'all have a great day. It's Mike and Mrs. Cast Iron over here. We'll see you
Bye-bye