Frankie’s Burgers

Like Diva Dolores, I’ve been thinking about the food I grew up eating. I spent much of my teenage life at my best friend Carolyne’s house (I called her Cari and she called me Cheri, so we’d rhyme) . Money was tight, but did we know it? Heck, no. We frequently ate meals at each other’s table without a thought to our blue-collar folks’ budgets. I don’t recall either of our moms complaining about another mouth to feed, either. One of my fondest memories is having burgers made by Carolyne’s mom, Frankie. Those were heavenly! To this day, I think of them as Frankie’s Burgers.

Cari & Cheri, inseparable in high school

A stay-at-home mom, Frankie could stretch a pound of hamburger to feed six in a time when one worried more about the grocery bill than about cholesterol, carbs, or fat grams. In fact, we never discussed dieting and weren’t overweight. Ah, those were the days.

One day, Frankie let me help her make the burgers and taught me her secret ingredients. To the best of my memory, this is the recipe for Frankie’s Burgers:

Frankie’s Burgers
Serves Six

Ingredients:
1 pound ground beef
1 large egg
1 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
1 envelope Lipton’s Onion Soup Mix
1½ cups bread crumbs*
Salt and pepper (to taste)

Directions:
In a mixing bowl, beat the egg. Mix in ground meat. Add all other ingredients and mix by hand. Don’t overwork the meat. Form into six patties. Cook in a covered skillet over medium heat until done, approximately ten minutes. Serve on buns. (Or not. I usually ate mine without bread.)

If you want to healthy it up, use lean ground sirloin or buffalo, Egg Beaters®, and omit the salt. There’s plenty of sodium in the onion soup mix. But don’t use anything but *plain white sandwich bread for the breadcrumbs. Frankie used up her stale sandwich bread, and the burgers tasted better for it. I tried making these with lean ground turkey. Don’t.

Unfortunately, Alzheimer’s has robbed Frankie of many of her memories, so I can’t verify my version of her recipe with her. I only hope she knew back in the day how much her burgers meant to us kids.

Diva Cheryl