Sunday: I want a patty melt

So I made one.  I'd read this article earlier in the week, and agreed with almost everything he said.  I did not toast the inside of the bread, because that's just a bit silly.  Here's my recipe:

Ingredients

•  Rye bread. This was the only rye I could find after visiting three grocery stores.  I think it's essential that the rye bread have caraway seeds in it, as they give a spice that keeps the sandwich from just being flat.  I would have prefered a darker rye, and one with more caraway seeds.  This was passable, but I was a bit disappointed.
• Onion.  I went with a simple white, because I don't really want this "caramel-y".
• Cheese. The above article gets it: you need Swiss and American.  You can make a patty melt with just one, but the combination is far superior.
• Butter. This requires quite a bit.
• Beef.  I didn't weight my burger, but I would guess it was about a third of a pound.  I probably should have gone a bit lighter, as the burger was a bit thicker than I wanted.

 Step 1: Make a burger that's square-ish so it'll fit on the bread.  Round burgers leave too much grilled-cheese-edge.

 Step 2: You know, cook it.

 Step 3: Remove it to a plate.  I've not done this in the past, and I always end up with super messy burgers.  This little rest lets the juices sort themselves out, so they don't bleed all over your hand when you eat it.

 Step 4: I actually added the onions while the burger was finishing the second side. Another good tip from the article above is to periodically deglaze with a bit of water.  Since I was cooking these on a fairly high heat (unlike when I caramelize onions), the water helped keep the onions cooking without burning, and made sure that all the burger fond got sucked up into the onions.

 Step 5: While the onions were cooking, I par-grilled the two sides of the sandwich, which helped get the bread toasty and start the cheese melting.

 Step 6: this was the point that I called the onions done.  Then it was time to build the sandwich: Swiss side, onions, burger, onions, American side.

Step 7: Once it was assembled and squished down a bit to make sure the onions were in the half melted cheese, it was time to return it to the bread pan (I used separate meat and bread pans, as well as separate meat and bread spatulas).  You can see that it's partially grilled, but not completely done.

 Step 8: Unlike how it looks after a flip.  You can tell that the American isn't quite as melty as the Swiss, so maybe that means next time I should start the American side a bit earlier.

 Step 9: Sliced and ready to eat.  I just paired it with some chips, going with the standard diner style "chips are included, fries for $1.99 more" plating.  You can see that the burger is a bit too thick here.  I'd rather have it be about half as thick.  It also shrank a bit, so I should have smashed the patty a lot more before throwing it in the pan.  One issue with these thin burgers is that they tend to cup up on the second side.  Maybe I need to get one of those burger press things.

Oh, and I had this to drink.

"Wait, what?"

Yeah, so I was at Times, my third grocery store, reluctantly accepting the rye bread I was forced to take.  I wanted to get a cold cherry coke, but couldn't find a cold drink case anywhere.  I decided to just go down the pop aisle and see what they had.  As I was walking by, my eye caught something, rushed it to my brain, which stopped everything to parse this phrase: "MEDIO LITRO."

"Whoa, wait, that's half-liter in Spanish!"

"That's what Mexican Coke speaks!"

I tried to post this twitter with the comment "that's...unexpected."

Despite being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Times carries Mexican Coke.  I don't really like Times, because their produce is sometimes a bit questionable.  I guess this means I should go there a bit more often.

• Squirrels are smarter than birds.  Significantly so. Why then do people keep getting surprised that squirrels can figure out their bird feeders?  To the squirrel, you've just put out a bunch of tasty treats.  Why do you think they care that you like birds more?
• Pen Ward was able to get a nicer eclipse photo because he lives along the path.
• Snorlax!
• Puppy!
• That almost sounds like a good deal.
• Pikachu!
• It's nice to see that censoring douchebaggery isn't limited to christian churches.  Wait, not nice. "Asstastic."