Barbecued Buffalo Burgers

I recently went to Trader Joes and perused the frozen food section. I found some frozen buffalo burger patties and I instantly became curious. I’ve never had buffalo and I love burgers…so why not try it out?

Firstly, let me just I’m not particularly fond of frozen burger patties…I always think of big barbecues and people slapping them on to the grill straight from the package with no seasoning, no nuthin! The end result: a burger with no flavor. You sort of stand around all the other guests, eating a basic ground beef patty with no flavor BUT ground beef and dry bread…You try to drown it in ketchup and mustard and mayo, but it doesn’t help. It makes your bread soggy and the patty slides all over the place. You become sad inside and start thinking about becoming vegetarian.

I refused to let this happen to me…not with my first buffalo experience!

I bought a bottle of barbecue sauce, Jack Daniels BBQ Sauce, to be exact.

I also bought some Yuca Croquettes as sides instead of French Fries. I thought this would be a nice compliment…Yuca is a typical ingredient in Cuban cooking. I grew up on Yuca. Fried Yuca is exceptionally good especially with a side of garlic dipping sauce. The croquettes were not as crispy as the Yuca Fries would be but they were just as delicious. You can pick these up in the frozen food isle in the Goya section or you could try to make your own with a Yuca Root…but that could be a lot of work!

I added some adobo to the burgers beforehand and then we added the bbq sauce as we were cooking them.

They turned out to be extremely delicious and contrary to what I’ve heard, did not taste gamey.

I would definitely buy them again.

Garlic Sausage with Spaghetti

Yesterday, we went to the farmers market in Los Angeles. While there, we decided to pick something up for dinner. We ended up buying some garlic sausage from a butcher. They had a nice variety of sausage but I decided I wanted to incorporate pasta with it and the garlic seemed like a good companion.

I decided to chop up the sausage in bits so it could cook quicker and I simmered the sausage bit in Chardonnay wine. After a few minutes of that, I added 4 cloves of garlic finely chopped and half a red onion also finely chopped. I added sliced mushrooms and grape tomatoes at the very end, since they cook quicker. I cooked this uncovered so the wine would evaporate.

 I made spaghetti and topped the spaghetti with the sausage mixture. Then drizzled the dish with olive oil and some italian herbs. Then we topped it off with some parmesan cheese and voila…a great meal.

 Who would have known these little piggies would taste so good?