Memorial Day Weekend in Quarantine

We hope everyone had a safe and fun Memorial Day weekend despite being quarantined! We missed being able to do a quick trip to the beach, but had fun as a family at home anyhow, remembering all of the heroes who make Memorial Day a day for celebration and relaxation.

For our Memorial Day dinner, we kept it simple by grilling burgers, smoking some brats and sauerkraut, and making some homemade brioche buns with some angel food cake for dessert. When seasoning our burgers, we tend to opt for Smokey Montreal Steak seasoning and Hamburger seasoning by McCormick. While the grill and smoker preheated, we sautéed some onion for the toppings and prepared a couple of the patties to be Juicy Lucys.

The night prior to our dinner, we prepared the brioche buns. When we aren’t using our own recipes, a cookbook, or a FoodNetwork recipe, we hop on Pinterest to see what we can find. We used this recipe for our brioche buns. Be awarer that the dough will be sticky, but don’t add extra flour or you may throw off the ratios later on when you go to knead it and form the dough into balls.

We let the dough rise in a mixing bowl covered with oiled plastic wrap in the fridge overnight. When getting ready to prepare dinner, we preheated the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit kneaded the dough until it reached room temperature. We lightly floured our counter where we were working and added some flour to our hands before starting to knead the dough for a few minutes before separating into equally sized balls. We added more flour as needed until the dough was separated into the appropriate numbers of balls. We then placed the balls of dough onto a greased pan, leaving enough space to allow them room to expand and covered with greased plastic wrap for at least an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. Once the dough has doubled in size, lightly brush the dough with a beaten egg and place in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes. Allow the rolls to cool and then use a bread knife and slice the rolls in half (or most of the way through based on preference) and set aside until ready to eat.

The sauerkraut and brats went into the smoker first since they take about an hour to cook at 275 degrees Fahrenheit. We used applewood chips to incorporate a hint of apple smokiness into the brats and sauerkraut. While they smoked, we seasoned and prepared the burger patties. To make a Juicy Lucy, use two patties and place a slice or two of cheese in-between and pinch the patties together. *** NOTE: Next time, we plan to try incorporating all the toppings except for lettuce and tomato into the two patties to see how it turns out.

For our toppings we prepped some sautéed onions, made some crispy bacon, and picked some fresh lettuce leaves from our garden. We were lucky that it was a gorgeous day outside, so we got to enjoy our meal as a family on our back deck. We finished our dinner off with some deliciously light angel food cake topped with whipped cream and fresh blueberries and strawberries.

Ingredients:

• 8 burger patties (or 1 lb ground beef to make into patties)
• lettuce
• 1 small onion
• 1 pack of thick sliced bacon
• Mayonaise
• Ketchup
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 C warm water
• 3 1/2 TBS milk (we substituted almond milk)
• 4 C flour
• 2 Tbs sugar
• 4 Tbs softened butter
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1 egg yolk for the egg glaze