Building a better (blended) burger
The heat is on to create the best version of an American favorite, with one special, healthier ingredient
Your parents hid the peas under your mashed potatoes. You may not have known this, but if you are now a parent, you’re probably trying this trick, too. While it’s depressing to realize that humans have to be duped into eating their vegetables, the Blended Burger Project proclaims its tasty (and healthier) agenda loud and clear, and dares you not to enjoy it.
The Blended Burger Project is spearheaded by the James Beard Foundation, the prestigious, New York-based nonprofit dedicated to making sure we all eat like adults. It’s a competition that takes place nationally over the summer (burger season in America), open to any and all restaurants that wish to throw their onion ring into the ring. And this year, that includes three in Santa Fe. The only requirement for entry is that the burger patty itself must be composed of at least 25 percent (or more) of mushrooms.
Mushrooms are in many ways the meat of the vegan world. While tofu has a more meat-like appearance (and can even be pressed and formed into meat-like shapes and textures), tofu is a sponge for flavors, a blank canvas on which taste can be built. Mushrooms, on the other hand, taste of umami, the essence of savoriness. You can achieve this with tofu, but mushrooms need very little in the way of processing to enhance the umami already bursting from their spores.
The movement toward blending meat with mushrooms into a burger was started by the Mushroom Council, which sounds like one of the groups that greeted Dorothy when her house landed in Oz, but is actually an organization that “provides education, promotion and research for the farms and growers of cultivated mushrooms in the United States,” according to Steve Solomon, its enthusiastic culinary director. While those ubiquitous white button mushrooms are the most prevalent variety, the organization also works with growers of criminis, portabellas and shiitakes, as well as the more delicate oysters, trumpets and maitakes (aka hen-of-the-woods). The Blended Burger Project was born out of an effort to promote the eating of mushrooms and, as a result, improve the American diet.
The Mushroom Council wants to position mushrooms not as the enemy of meat but its new best friend. While the various meat producers of the world might not wish to say so, we eat too much meat. Pound for pound, Americans consume far more animal protein than is good for us. And when it comes to reducing meat consumption, it’s smart to start with America’s favorite meat delivery device: the hamburger. According to Solomon (quoting the World Resources Institute), Americans consume 10 billion to 12 billion burgers per year (amazingly, that number doesn’t even count the ones we eat at home).
“If you finely dice, chop or grind mushrooms to pretty much the same consistency, or as finely as you can, then you can put them in with any sort of ground meat — anywhere from 25 percent to 50 percent — you will get a burger that is better for you nutritionally and one that is better for the environment,” Solomon says.
Obviously, the Mushroom Council has spores in the game, but its message is a good one — fungi require few resources to cultivate and offer a nutritional punch for very few calories.
The Blended Burger Project and competition is in its fourth year, but this is the first year with Santa Fe participants. The Ranch House, Izanami and Restaurant Martín are competing with their custom-designed creations-on-a-bun.
Chef Martín Rios, frequent James Beard award nominee, has gone the extra mile to craft something a bit over the top at Restaurant Martín. Rios’ burger is made not with beef but with duck, mixed with about 30 percent shiitake and crimini mushrooms, which he firsts roasts with garlic and shallots to amp up the flavor. The mushrooms then get ground to a fine, meat-like consistency and mixed in with ground duck legs, duck breast and a little duck skin for moisture. He tops it with some crispy pancetta, pickled red onion, poblano chiles and sharp cheddar, and sits it on top of a black bean mole spread for $16. The burger should be available in about a week. He advises customers to order it medium rare.
“Playing around with this was really fun,” Rios says, “and it’s going to be fun to explain to our customers that you’re eating a duck burger that also has 30 percent mushrooms. You kind of feel like you’re ordering something a little bit healthier.”
For his burger, Josh Baum, owner of the Ranch House, gave special attention to his fungi, marinating crimini mushrooms, lightly smoking and then sautéeing them before combining them with ground turkey. The sandwich is topped with persimmon-apricot-bacon butter, giving it a slightly sweet and savory dynamic for $12.95.
“We sell so much meat, I thought it was a good way to do something sustainable with one of our items,” Baum says. “I love turkey burgers, and we don’t have one on our menu, so I thought I’d play with that.”
The entry burgers are supposed to be on the menu of participating restaurants for about a month, giving voters (i.e. the mushroom burger-eating public) ample time to vote for their favorites via the James Beard website. But the forces behind the competition say there’s no reason to pull the tasty mushroom burgers as the summer wanes.
“The James Beard Foundation wants this to be a movement, for people to keep it on their menu all year long,” Solomon says.
“You kind of feel like you’re ordering something a little bit healthier.” Chef Martín Rios on his duck and mushroom blended burger, pictured