PATTY MELT & GREEN SALAD: A ST. PATRICK'S DAY CELEBRATION

Hi folks, Chef G. here and, by golly gosh, I sure am on a roll here on the Chef G. Cooking Channel.  This will be the third consecutive month I've posted this year, which is a big improvement over my performance in 2023.  I think I might have been spurred by seeing some of my celebrity chef competitors posting their crap on cooking shows almost every day.  Sometimes they shuffle from burner to burner to oven to oven in order to cook several dishes at the same time.  Those dorks might be onto something:  When it comes to being a social media influencer, maybe quantity really is better than quality.  

HAH!  Incredibly, some of those "chefs" really seem to believe that.  (Yeah, I'm talking about YOU, Guy Fieri, Gordon Ramsay, Bobby Flay, Rachel Ray, and all the other showoffs on PBS, CBS, FOX, the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, etc.)  It's kind of sad to see them making a mockery of the profession I love so much.  Cookery is a serious art--not a vehicle for attracting the highest number of "LIKES" and "VIEWS."     

Yet, here I am today, vacillating between quantity and quality.  Those celebrity chefs have gotten into my head, but their evil ways have not overtaken me.  I'll stick to one high quality dish.  A delicious dish.  A dish for the common man like me.  And a salad.

Let the festivities begin!

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Indeed, it is a festive occasion.  This is the week leading up to St. Patrick's Day.  Irish people all over the U.S. and many other countries--including Ireland--will be wearing green clothing, eating corned beef & cabbage, drinking green beer and/or Guinness and/or Irish Whiskey, and singing drinking songs and sea shanties well into the night.

I'm not Irish, but I've done all that festive stuff in the past.  Well, not ALL of them.  I've avoided the singing thing because my voice isn't all that great.  But I've been practicing, and today I'm ready to flaunt my Irish tenor.  I even recruited the Irish Rovers to accompany me in the video you'll be seeing below. 

 

One or two years ago, I posted a St. Patrick's Day Reuben Sandwich recipe.  It was, as always, SUPER DELICIOUS.  I wasn't sure how to reproduce that excellence this year.  A corned beef and cabbage dinner was my first thought, but that seemed too cliche.  Instead, I came up with a Patty Melt.  I thought it was named after St. Patty.  Much too late, I realized my mistake.  A hamburger patty with cheese and grilled onion between two pieces of bread has nothing to do with St. Patty.

Undeterred, I made a patty melt anyway.  I tossed four thin quarter-pounders over hot coals.  While they cooked, I sauteed onions to carmelized perfection.

The tricky part was spreading a little mayo on both sides of two slices of sourdough bread, toasting them in a pan, and then transferring the burger and onions, along with a nice slice of cheese onto the bread.  I flipped the sandwich back and forth on the pan until it achieved a nice golden-brown hue.  It was like the same excellent technique I use when making a grilled cheese sandwich.

NICE

MMMMMM

I

Serve with a Green salad.  (This picture was taken before I poured a huge amount of orange French salad dressing on it.)

Chef G. approves.

Chef G. is now aware that his Patty Melt wasn't Irish.  He also knows his beer is neither green nor Irish.  It was still pretty tasty.