Can you upscale a cheesy bacon hamburger? Sure ten years ago, the age of fancy mushrooms and French cheeses and gold-flaked everything could’ve elevated a humble cheeseburger, but it was simply a hamburger with wallet-crushing toppings. What if I told you there was a cheap grocery store ingredient that upscaled your cheeseburger into an occasion-worthy, show-stopping main dish wonder? Well, you don’t have to fumble with a ton of ingredients, this one ingredient is your easy answer.
It was all winging it with this recipe on Food Wishes’ Youtube Channel, with this hamburgerburger beef wellington. Luckily this first test run was a winning an experiment with a double duty, one-two punch! The hamburger wellington elevates a ho-hum cheeseburger, and the hamburger makes the fancy beef wellington dish more affordable. Either way, you’ll be eating fancy tonight!
To start, you render bacon in a pan on medium-low heat. Gradually cooking the bacon low and slow lets all of the fat leave the bacon and gives you an even crispy crunch. In the grease, you cook your hamburger to medium to medium-rare. Warning! Don’t overcook your hamburger at this point, the patty will continue cooking later in the recipe. You’ll want to cool your hamburger down completely, or else it will melt the other ingredients.
While the hamburger is cooled down, you prep the upscaling ingredient — puff pastry. Flour the surface before rolling out the dough, then use a bowl bigger than the patty to cut out circles. Note that one circle should be larger than the other. Once you get the right shape, let the circles chill, like the patty, for ten minutes.
Next, prep your hamburger toppings. In the video, both bacon and cheese are the toppings, but you can mix them up with other things like caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, or other meats. He uses shredded cheese, but as he makes the video, the shredded cheese becomes hard to keep in one spot, and he suggests using thin slices of cheese.
On the larger circle of puff pastry, poke a hole in the center of the dough, this will allow the steam to escape and prevent the puff pastry from bursting. Using the center hole as a starting point, slice lines into the top of the pastry, it will help the circle flat better on top of the hamburger, and the knife scoring will create a beautiful visual appearance. As annoying as it is, you’ll want to chill the dough again.
Now you’re ready to assemble! Place the small circle on the parchment-lined baking sheet, then place the patty on top, next you pile on the toppings, and then apply egg wash around the perimeter of the pastry. Lastly, you place the larger scored puff pastry on top, don’t be afraid to bend the puff pastry so it forms tightly over the patty. Pinch the dough on the bottom, crimp the bottom edge and fold it over.
Again, the patty needs to be chilled, but you can start preheating your oven in the meantime. Sure, there are some points of waiting, but everything inside the dough is already cooked, so you only bake the dough until it’s nice and golden. Once the oven is preheated, and the hamburger wellington is firmer, crimp the edges with a fork to secure it more and brush the outside with the remaining egg wash.
When the puff pastry is warmed up and golden brown, the once-cold ingredients will be piping hot, so you’ll want to rest it for five minutes. This hamburger wellington is so rich that one patty will serve two people. If you want to make multiple patties, you can prep them a day or so before and bake them off as you need.
To get specifics on the recipes, watch the video below.