Cooking In, Dinner, Event, Lunch, Quick PostKerry Alaric CheeseboroJune 01, 2013barbecue, BBQ, brown sugar, burger, burgers, cabbage, cayenne, celery salt, cider, coleslaw, Cooking In, Dinner, dry rub, egg, egg yolk, eggs, event, fried, garlic, granulated, hot sauce, juice, lemon, lemon juice, liquid smoke, Lunch, May, month, mustard, nutmeg, onion, paprika, pepper, powder, Quick Post, red pepper, red pepper flakes, rub, runny, seasonings, slaw, spices, spicy, sugar, sunny-side up, sweet and spicy, vinegar, white wine, yolkComment

The Very Merry Month

| “Month of May” Burger | Grilled Dry-Rubbed Beef Burger, Carolina-Style Barbecue Sauce, Sweet & Spicy Cabbage Slaw, Sunny-Side Up Fried Egg

MAY IS NATIONAL BURGER MONTH, National Barbecue Month, and National Egg Month. And as I too find it almost ridiculous how we need these food holidays to celebrate the things we already enjoy day—should we choose a month to celebrate salt as well?!—it does impel me into inspiration.

And so I decided to end my birthday month of May by combining all three honorary foods. I made a dry BBQ rub of salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, nutmeg, paprika, cayenne, and sugar, and lightly dredged some 80/20 ground beef patties.

While I grilled them with rendered bacon fat in a cast iron skillet over medium high heat, I made a Carolina-style barbecue sauce of mustard, cider vinegar, hot sauce, salt, pepper, liquid smoke, sugar. I also made a sweet and spicy cabbage slaw with white wine vinegar, lemon juice, celery salt, sugar, and red pepper flakes.

After cooking the burgers to the desired medium rare, I placed them on butter-toasted brioche bottoms that were dressed with the slaw, pouring some of the sauce on top of them then topping the whole thing off with a sunny side up egg.

The silky warm runny egg yolk nicely brought together the spices of the burger's seared dry rub and the BBQ sauces seasonings, and adeptly tempered the acid of the slaw's vinegar and the sauce's heat. The rub's sugar as well helped caramelized the burger's exterior, helping maintain a lot of the warm and perfectly medium rare interior's juices.

With the runny yolk and sauce, I had to of course knife and fork this bad boy. It's not a dainty burger, but it sure is a damn delicious one.

And now that I've got burgers, BBQ, and eggs covered and out of the way—who am I kidding? My whole summer will probably still run rampant with them!maybe I have some a bit more healthy to look forward to in June?

Nope. June is National Soul Food Month. I'm doomed. And happily so.