Pineapple and pork go extremely well together, as they both have a nice complementary sweetness to them…so we decided to turn that combination into a burger! Since we like the spicy/sweet combination, we also added red pepper flakes to our patties, and it added a nice additional dimension of flavour! We cooked ours in a cast iron pan with some red peppers (a highly suggested topping), but these would be perfect on the grill for a cookout too!
We served our burgers with a modified version of our Lemon Parmesan Broccoli Rabe (essentially swapped the lemon Parmesan out for garlic and pepper). However, any of our Fries Recipes would be fantastic here…especially our Sweet Potato Wedge Fries!
Time: 20 Minutes
Ingredients:
- Ground Pork (4-6 ounces/burger)
- Dried Pineapple
- Red Pepper Flakes
- Burger Bun
- Any toppings you like. We used lettuce, roasted red peppers, and mayonnaise
Method:
- Dice your dried pineapple, and mix it with your pork and red pepper flakes.
- Heat your grill, or heat some oil in a pan, and when your cooking surface is hot, form your burger patties, and place them on your cooking surface.
- Cook for about 4-5 minutes, flip, and cook for another 4-5 minutes (or until your burgers reach a minimum internal cooked temperature of 165 degrees F).
- As your burgers cook, prep your bun and toppings.
- When your burgers hit that 165 degrees F mark, you’re good to go!
- Plate, devour, and enjoy!
…and that reminds me of an iconic German dish developed by the country’s first TV chef; Clemens Wilmenrod in 1955. He was actually an actor who was supported by a cook behind the scenes, but he gave Germans their first taste of international dishes. Of course nobody ate that toast in Hawaii, instead it inspired exotic thoughts and desires in a nation that was slowly leaving the war behind and rebuilding the destroyedhttps://heatneat.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/toast-hawaii-die-2/ country. By 1955, the “Wirtschaftswunder” was beginning, allowing Germans to travel for the first time. Not surprisingly, the first guest workers started arriving and some decided to start restaurants. Accordingly, the first pizza was baked around that time.
But I digress – Toast Hawaii was a fantasy meant to wake a yearning for culture different than the Germans’.
It consisted of a slice of toast, a slice of cooked ham, a slice of pineapple (canned, because fresh wasn’t available), and a slice of Velveeta style processed cheese. It was then grilled and served. In restaurants, a Maraschino cherry was sometimes added to the hole in the pineapple. The alternative was to replace the pineapple with stalks of asparagus. This was considered a fine hors d’euvre for a special occasion like Christmas dinner or New Year’s Eve. Of course there was no fresh asparagus then, so they used small stalks preserved in a brine in a glass, making the dish not as good as it could have been.
I thought a few years ago that this dish had disappeared from menus, only to find it here and there in restaurants catering to older folks or places tucked away in the countryside…
Anyway, my family used to enjoy it from time to time, so I rebuilt it using good ingredients. It is very retro, but ham (or pork) is a natural with pineapple, and some cheese certainly doesn’t harm in the mix.
Here’s my take: https://heatneat.wordpress.com/2018/06/07/toast-hawaii-die-2/