Want Ernest Hemingway's Hamburger Recipe? Yeah, You Do

By Jon Graef in Food on Oct 6, 2013 4:45PM

Recently, food writer Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan set about to try and find legendary author and Oak Park native Ernest Hemingway's hamburger recipe after reading about how Hemingway's digital documents from his home in Cuba were donated to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Spoiler alert: She found it. Want it? Yeah, you do.

Here's the recipe, via Open Culture:

Ingredients-

1 lb. ground lean beef

2 cloves, minced garlic

2 little green onions, finely chopped

1 heaping teaspoon, India relish

2 tablespoons, capers

1 heaping teaspoon, Spice Islands sage

Spice Islands Beau Monde Seasoning — 1/2 teaspoon

Spice Islands Mei Yen Powder — 1/2 teaspoon

1 egg, beaten in a cup with a fork

About 1/3 cup dry red or white wine

1 tablespoon cooking oil

What to do-

Break up the meat with a fork and scatter the garlic, onion and dry seasonings over it, then mix them into the meat with a fork or your fingers. Let the bowl of meat sit out of the icebox for ten or fifteen minutes while you set the table and make the salad. Add the relish, capers, everything else including wine and let the meat sit, quietly marinating, for another ten minutes if possible. Now make your fat, juicy patties with your hands. The patties should be an inch thick, and soft in texture but not runny. Have the oil in your frying pan hot but not smoking when you drop in the patties and then turn the heat down and fry the burgers about four minutes. Take the pan off the burner and turn the heat high again. Flip the burgers over, put the pan back on the hot fire, then after one minute, turn the heat down again and cook another three minutes. Both sides of the burgers should be crispy brown and the middle pink and juicy.

Read Tan's extraordinary article about her find at the Paris Review Blog.