Name: Smashed Beef Burgers and Sauce
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 6 servings

Sauce

Burgers

Abner Ramirez and Amanda Sudano Ramirez are LA-based singer-songwriters and parents of three who love to collaborate, bond, and have fun together in the kitchen. The duo embraces the joys and challenges of cooking while juggling family life.

Amanda Sudano Ramirez and Abner Ramirez

Abner & Amanda's Smashed Beef Burgers and Sauce

Smashed Beef Burgers and Sauce

Meet The Creator

Annie Starke's Strawberry and Vanilla Sauce

Strawberry and Vanilla Sauce

Annie Starke's Crunchy Chicken and Peanut Salad and Peanut Sauce

Crunchy Chicken and Peanut Salad with Peanut Sauce

Jo's Marinara Sauce

I love to open a jar of this sauce to toss with pasta on a winter evening. The flavors and texture transport me straight to the summer garden, with its orderly rows of heirloom tomatoes, onions, garlic, and basil. It is such a joy to have this flavorful sauce in the pantry, ready and waiting to make a quick, comforting, and warming meal to eat together after a day out in the wind and cold.

Rustic Tomato Sauce

Do you like happiness? If you don’t, then this recipe isn’t for you. But if you do, then let’s make my macaroni and cheese together. This is the dish that put me on the map. It’s the one everyone talks about and the one that every person who comes over for dinner begs me to make. And the beauty is, it’s so simple. You’ll have friends begging you for this recipe.

Macaroni and Cheese

Samantha Seneviratne's Ham and Cheese Strata

Ham and Cheese Strata

Citrus and Herb Vinaigrette

Samantha Seneviratne's Chicken and Clam Paella

Chicken and Clam Paella

You can’t have soul food without some good music and friends, so throw on some of your favorite tunes, and invite over your friends and family because you’ve fried up some amazingly light and crispy fish. Add your tartar sauce if you’ve got it, maybe some hush puppies, or just some sliced wheat bread and enjoy.

Millie Peartree's Fried Fish with Tartar Sauce

Fried Fish with Tartar Sauce

Charles Hunter III's Peppercorn Chicken with Fig Sauce

Peppercorn Chicken with Fig Sauce

A bone-in ribeye is my favorite cut of steak, and I love grilling for special occasions. It is well marbled, flavorful, and the ultimate classic cut. Chimichurri sauce is one of those condiments that you can slather onto almost anything and pairs perfectly with a steak. I make a big batch and use it throughout the whole week. There is something about the fresh herbs and vinegar that makes this a bright, vibrant, highly flavored sauce.

Elizabeth Poett's Ribeye Steak with Chimichurri

Ribeye Steak with Chimichurri Sauce

Joanna Gaines' Homemade Pasta Noodles with Vodka Sauce

Homemade Pasta Noodles with Vodka Sauce

Samantha Seneviratne's Crepes with Lemon and Sugar

Crêpes with Lemon and Sugar

The first step to this recipe is to make a rich mushroom stock, which packs enormous mushroom flavor intensity, adding depth to any recipe where stock is used. When sourcing the fresh mushrooms, look for larger ones because they’ll hold up to the braise. Clusters of lion's mane, oyster mushrooms, and maitake mushrooms can often be found at specialty grocery stores (but white button mushrooms can be substituted). To prep them, pull apart the clusters into 3-inch chunks. The final product is an umami-filled dish with brightness from the orange juice. Enjoy it as a veggie-forward main or a hearty side dish.

Katie Button's Orange and Honey Braised Mushrooms

Orange and Honey Braised Mushrooms

Annie Starke's Sliced Skirt Steak with Romesco Sauce

Sliced Skirt Steak with Romesco Sauce

I love a one-pot meal that also feels extra-special, and paella makes that kind of meal. This Spanish dish of rice, vegetables and meat or seafood packs flavor and simplicity into one skillet. A large pan of paella is festive, colorful and serves a crowd — it’s just right for a celebratory dinner with friends and family. Making the vegetable-and-aromatic sofrito is a key step in cooking paella and acts as the dish’s flavor base. I like a combination of mussels, shrimp and lobster tails in the seafood version of the dish, but you can easily tailor it to your favorite types of seafood.

Elizabeth Poett's Seafood and Asparagus Paella

Seafood and Asparagus Paella

You will see in my recipes that I use the same levain build, or a slightly modified version of it, when I mix bread. Whether the final bread is enriched, sweet, or rustic, I find this levain build to work just fine. There are many, many ways to build a levain but I believe using this one build makes life at home easy.

Sourdough Starter and Levain

I love to eat all kinds of food, but in all honesty if you told me I could have only one thing every day for the rest of my life, it would be mac and cheese. I realize this is exactly the choice that many eight-year-olds I know would make, and I’m okay with that. I first had this recipe, which has become my favorite, at my friend Becki’s house. Her family has become a part of our own, and she knows just how much I love mac and cheese. It has become a tradition of ours that every time we join her family for dinner at their house, she makes this side for us. It’s simple and creamy enough to please all the kids, while the blend of cheeses and optional crispy panko topping makes it feel interesting to adults. Since I started making this recipe for my own family, my favorite things to pair it with are Almond Chicken Tenderloins (page 211) or Meat Loaf (page 259).

Becki's Mac and Cheese

Cheese and Chicken Arepas

For marinated mushrooms, I usually select a combination of baby bella and shiitake mushrooms. They are tender and lend a pretty, deep brown color to the dish. Lion’s mane, oyster and button mushrooms would also work well here. To clean the mushrooms, trim the stem and gently remove dirt or debris. For shiitakes, remove the entire stem from each mushroom because it’s usually too fibrous to eat. Shiitake stems can be dried in a paper bag in the fridge and used to make stock at a later date. Use marinated mushrooms in salads, on charcuterie boards, or enjoy as is for a healthy snack. Make a vinaigrette with the leftover marinade or use it for a second batch of marinated mushrooms!

Katie Button's Seared and Marinated Mushrooms

Smashed Beef Burgers and Sauce

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