A few nights ago was the MLB All-Star Game and as every year, I invited a bunch of friends to come over and watch the game while enjoying some food. This year we decided to make Brats and Sliders as well as some homemade Peanuts and Cracker Jacks, you know baseball food. The Brats were the easiest to prepare and make while the sliders took slightly more work. The Cracker Jacks was just my caramel popcorn recipe with added roasted peanuts. Everything turned out great and I’d like to share how I made everything. Tonight’s focus will be on the sliders.
First we’ll start with all the prep work. The sliders were prepped the night before the party. Here’s what you’ll need;
Ingredients:
- 1 lb of ground sirloin -(not ground beef, and you’ll want a ratio of at least 85/15 or your patties will lose too much weight you don’t eat a lot of ground beef so here is where you can splurge a bit.)
- Salt
- Pepper
- Garlic and Onion Powder
- Potato, Hawaiian or Dinner rolls
- Fixings
Directions:
In a 9×13 cookie sheet place a layer of wax paper down. On the paper place the ground sirloin and roll out with a roller or glass cup until it fills the sheet and is about an 1/8 of an inch thick. You should have a thin rectangular sheet of the ground sirloin. This is where the seasoning will come in. You can use anything here, I used salt, pepper, onion and garlic powder. Season evenly over the whole top side of the meat. This step insures every bite of the sliders will be seasoned the same and satisfaction will ensue. Now fold over lengthwise the sirloin so that the seasoned part of the meat is now in between the two layers. Firmly press the layers together or a pocket will form for grease to collect and shoot on some unsuspecting patrons of your party (sorry Megan and Danny). Cut into 8 equal size portions. At this point I refrigerated until the next day, taking the meat out of the fridge an hour before cooking to reach room temperature.
Now on to cooking our sliders. The griddle is the best, fastest and easiest piece of kitchen equipment that we can use to make a large quantity of sliders. We can cook about 8 at a time so this is perfect for a party when you have to pump out a few dozen in a few minutes.
The griddle needs to get nice and hot from 375-400. You’ll place all 8 on, one right after another. Cook for two minutes on each side or until you see the bottoms start to sear. You’ll flip each slider in the order you put them on then cook for another 2 minutes. Place any cheese you have on right after the flip to help with the melting. Bam your done. Serve on your favorite roll of choice and your choice of toppings. Call em mini burgers or sliders, in any case their delicious. Enjoy.
Single Ingredient Project 