Stress-free burgers

August 28, 2025 3:36 PM

A few months ago, my dad visited me, and I made burgers for him one night because he likes burgers and because I know I can make them well enough to his satisfaction. Even so, I've always found burgers to be so much work, so I decided to try and make things easier for myself by buying pre-made frozen patties.

That was a terrible mistake. I think using the frozen patties made it so much more stressful. And it made me realize, cooking burgers on a pan is not ideal. All the fat renders off and just sits in a puddle and then you have a splattery mess to deal with. I had to keep removing all the extra fat from the pan, which was both annoying and precarious. I ended up way overcooking the burgers and they didn't taste very good ):

But a few days ago I saw some french fries and it made me really want french fries, and I also had a burger from my favorite ice cream shop, which was delicious, and I thought, it's time for me to make some burgers and fries again.

I used this ranch burger recipe, which is one of my go-to's. Some people will tell me that I'm really making meatloaf because of the fact that there's ranch seasoning, onions, breading, and egg mixed in with the beef, but I don't care, that's what makes it taste good.

But you know what really made this a successful stovetop burger? I used 93% lean beef. Now I like my meat fatty, but I really wanted to avoid the puddle of fat in my pan, so I splurged a bit on this. (It's okay, it evens out the mayonnaise that I bought for less than $1)

And it totally worked! I cooked the patties and it was super chill! I even used my meat thermometer and I cooked the meat to a temperature of about 140°F, which was plenty cooked.

It did still take a while to prep and cook and clean it all, but the important thing was that I didn't stress out about it, and I didn't make a mess.

Imitation crab musubi

September 7, 2025 2:02 PM

On Friday, I was working at a friend's house, and by the time the workday ended I was SO HUNGRY that I impulsively bought a pack of imitation crab from Aldi. As I was grabbing it, one of the workers there said to me "Have you had these before?" I told her I have, and she said "Oh okay, just making sure, because they're kind of sweet and really artificial tasting." Well, it is imitation crab, so I kind of expect it to taste artificial. I know some people that really dislike the taste of it, but I like it! I'd rather snack on fake crab than on crackers.

Aldi used to sell smaller packages of imitation crab, but now it's like, a whole pound! So I had way more than I needed to satisfy my hunger that evening, and I wanted a way to use up the rest of it (without just...snacking on it some more). I was browsing for ideas online, and I came across some creamy imitation crab onigiri recipes. And that sounded delicious.

Problem is, I don't have an onigiri mold. But what I do have is a musubi mold! I really didn't want to buy any extra ingredients for this, so I used different recipes for inspiration and just threw something together based on what I already had:

• two nori sheets
• short grain rice
• furikake
• mayonnaise
• Shark brand sriracha
• some sad looking cilantro, so I might as well throw that into the mix too

I shredded up some pieces of imitation crab and mixed it with mayonnaise and Sriracha. I cooked a cup of the rice and once that was done, I mixed in a tablespoon or so of furikake. To assemble, I placed half a nori sheet on my cutting board with the musubi mold in the middle of it. I layered in some rice, then some crab, then some cilantro, more furikake, sesame seeds because why not, and then a layer of rice to finish it off!

And then I just pressed down, removed the mold, and wrapped it up!

It was a tasty treat! And I was so happy to use up the rest of my nori as well as the rest of a jar of mayo. I am getting through so many of my sauces and shelf stable ingredients! At this point I'm refusing to buy any long lasting ingredient that will leave me with a bunch of leftover. (Except for like, oil and salt) One day I will get through it all!