Recipe: The Asian Supernation burger

"in Rand-Mcnally, hamburgers eat people" - Lisa Simpson

This burger was a knockout!  The name came around as we were brainstorming - Dan and I started by wanting to utilize a Korean barbeque marinate on the patty and soon found that there was no way we could limit ourselves to just Korea with an Asian themed burger.  To omit Japanese mayonnaise alone just seemed wrong.  Once we widened the parameters of the burger, it was clear that it would evolve into an unstoppable force of flavour - the Asian Supernation!  Does this mean that there's a European Union burger coming?  Maybe, not yet, but it might be necessary to compete with this.

This burger also gave rise to the culinary maraca - the puffed rice won-ton - a beast so dangerous it warranted its own post.  We wanted some real crunch to compete with the Nacho burger - I had prepared some puffed rice and we were toying with the idea of including a single fried won-ton wrapper inside the burger.  Then I thought about locking in the rice between two wrappers - would it work?  If it did, it would be a one-two punch of crunch.  I actually did a test run the day before we made the burgers.  I thought it was going to burst the way it inflated upon frying, but it held strong.  Once in the burger, it added a ridiculous height element to the equation, but that made it so that in order to eat the burger, you had to press down on the top bun until the won-ton broke.  Kind of like a starter's pistol signalling that it was time to eat.  Here's how it all finally came together.


The Asian Supernation burger:

 - bun - standard white sesame
 - patty - Korean barbeque marinate
 - greens - shredded nori
 - relish - kimchee
 - sauces - Sriracha aoli
               - Japanese mayo
 - garnishes - teriyaki marinated and grilled pineapple
                   - Chinese style barbeque pork
                   - togarashi puffed rice won-ton
                   - sauteed hon shimeji mushrooms