The Mack is a smash-style, triple-decker with Omaha Steaks PureGround New York Strip Burger
with minced onions, cheddar cheese sauce, chopped lettuce, and my own special sauce.
Now, what really ties this burger together is the sauce so let's get right into it right now. We're
gonna mince the pepperoncini and mince the capers, so if you want it spicier, leave the seeds in;
if you don't, take the seeds out. I prefer spicier so I'm going to leave them in there.
And we do the same with our capers. Just turn them out on the cutting board so they don't
roll around – like kind of flatten them first with the side of the knife. Same thing, away we mince.
Then let's make our own special sauce.
Mayonnaise.
Mustard for a little bit of zip.
Ketchup for great color and also some flavor - a little bit of sweetness.
Caper juice for acidity.
Rice wine vinegar for a nice sweet acidity as well and balance.
A couple dashes of hot sauce.
And as always, I love including a little bit of Worcestershire
for some nice umami – a couple dashes of that.
Pinch of salt.
Pinch of black pepper.
Let's not forget our minced pepperoncini and capers for a nice little salty kind of note.
And we whisk all of our ingredients together. It's going to add balance, sweetness, saltiness,
acidity, a little bit of spice to make this an extraordinary sauce.
And now for The Mack we're going to need onions two ways: thinly sliced and minced.
Alright so first, let's jump into slicing.
We want to slice this onion as thinly as possible – as thin as you can get them.
Next, we are going to mince the onion. And the traditional method for mincing or small dicing
an onion is, you want to have your sharp knife and first make about four to five cuts horizontally.
Then you turn the onion towards you and do about six to seven slices vertically.
Okay, then you turn it to the side again and from there,
you go vertically again and that's going to create perfectly uniform minced onion every single time.
Now, for this burger, we're using iceberg. Iceberg is traditionally served with burgers
so we're going to keep it very traditional today. So I'm going to opt
to mince the lettuce so every single bite tastes exactly like the one before. We're
all about consistency in flavors and making every single bite just as delicious as the previous.
The New York Strip PureGround Beef Burgers are great for the smash-style
burger because they're going to stay nice and tender and juicy.
So, first things first, to reduce shrinkage, thumb right in the middle for that nice little dimple.
And then we're gonna go heavy with the kosher salt and black pepper on both sides.
Let's get smashing!
First things first, we want to have our heavy-duty cast iron pan - it's going to retain heat.
Grape-seed oil – high smoke point.
So once that gets nice and hot,
we're going to make two separate piles of our thinly sliced onions.
Then what we do next is, we put the burger on top of those thinly sliced onions,
we get our burger press, and then we smash!
You let that go for about three to four minutes until the onions get nice and caramelized,
and you have that nice browning on the burger.
Alright I think we should be good to go, going to flip that over like so.
And then we're going to add our American cheese. I'm opting for American
cheese because if you think of cheeseburgers, your mind normally goes to American cheese,
so again, we're keeping it classic with real familiar flavors and it has that super meltiness.
Alright now we're going to elevate this American classic even more with a cheese sauce.
So first things, heavy cream. I'm going to bring that heavy cream to a boil. Before I do
that, a couple dashes of hot sauce for some heat. And a little bit more of Worcestershire for umami.
Alright, we're starting to come to a boil here.
Alright, then we add sharp cheddar cheese. I like
using sharp cheddar cheese – gives it a nice tangy note.
Get that cheese melted, have it incorporate, make that cheese sauce with the heavy cream.
Pinch of salt.
Pinch of black pepper.
Once that comes to a boil, you reduce it to a simmer.
Let that simmer for about two to three minutes.
I think we're ready to build our Mack.
Okay, first things first, we want to build our burger. We want to have our special sauce. Bottom
bun, do a nice little smear of that special sauce – about a tablespoon. Middle bun – let's
not forget that – which we toasted on both sides. And last but definitely not least, our top bun.
We have our pickles. Two on the bottom. Our perfectly smashed burger with the onions in there.
Creamy cheese sauce – a nice little drizzle of that.
Minced lettuce.
Raw onion for that nice fresh bite.
Middle bun.
Two more pickles.
Another smashed burger.
More cheese sauce.
More chopped lettuce.
More onion.
And there you have it: our Omaha Steaks The Mack. We're elevating an American classic
where it's not fast food, it's great food.