Baseball, apple pie, mom, and hot dogs. All these things scream Americana, at least to me, and probably to you because you’ve also watched a million advertisements in your life about what America is. Those four words are on a cross-stitch somewhere. The reality is that football has usurped baseball and, of course, hamburgers took the mantle of Americana champions from hot dogs a long time ago. But what about apple pie and moms? Both are totally still f***able.

But what’s even more American than America? Being American and claiming to be from somewhere else of course! There’s nothing Caucasian Americans love more than having a great-great-great grand cousin from Dublin on Saint Patrick’s Day or an Aunt who swears during Octoberfest that she was Duchess Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in a past life! I’m totally the same way! I self-identify as a Cleveland-American and my people emigrated west from the fishing village of Vermilion, Ohio to Pig’s Eye, Minnesota back in the aughts. We enjoy pirogi and walleye, pastrami from Slyman’s and sports teams that are no so great. We also know a thing or three about hamburgers.

Now the great thing about hamburgers and cheeseburgers is that they are infinitely customizable. Do you think each of Phillip Rivers’ nine kids has their burger the exact same way? Yes, because he’s an NFL player, so you know he’s all like, “trust the process” and “do your job” and “you are gonna sit there and eat those pickles unless you want to run laps.”

And that’s what we’re gonna do today. Not run laps because running is terrible. No, we’re gonna make customized burgers!

To accomplish this, we’re gonna take the two most American things we can think of-hamburgers and being from somewhere else-together to put a Greek twist on a Minnesota classic, the Juicy (or Jucy) Lucy. It’s spelled Juicy and Jucy because, as with any good origin story, THERE IS CONTROVERSY. Two different restaurants here in the Twin Cities claim to be the originator and the battle is contentious. Without taking sides in the debate, I prefer “Juicy” simply because it’s less likely to be written across the butt of some knockoff sweat pants. Our Juicy Lucy is gonna be called the Juicy Loúsi because I’m a totally a polyglot and not just taking what Google Translate gave me for a result.

For the uninitiated, the Juicy Lucy is just a cheeseburger but with the cheese coming from inside the burger. Yeah, that’s right. A Juicy Lucy is a meat and cheese Twinkie. Holy crap, you guys! When I first moved here, this blew my mind! Boom! It’s a cheeseburger, but you switch up where the ingredients live, add the risk of severe facial burns and it’s a whole new ballgame. With the first bite of a Juicy Lucy, the cheese splooges forth like that chest-burster scene in Alien and threatens to burn every piece of skin within a ten-mile radius of your mouth. Hell, the first time I wore my “It’s Tuesday Somewhere” taco shirt, I bit into one and a jet of cheese grease shot six feet straight up in the air and landed all over the front of my shirt. Totally worth it.

There’s not much to making a Juicy Lucy, but with a Juicy Loúsi there’s SO MUCH MORE. Since it’s finally cookout weather, we’re going add macaroni salad and deviled eggs to the menu. Don’t you ever tell me that I hide the recipes!

Ingredients

Macaroni Salad

• 2 Hard-boiled eggs
• ¼ – ½ Box elbow macaroni
• Onion
• Mustard
• Mayonnaise
• Paprika

Deviled Eggs

• Hard-boiled eggs
• Mayonnaise
• Mustard
• Paprika
• Yes, my deviled eggs and macaroni salad are very similar with different mustard and mayo deployment methods.

Juicy Loúsi

• Hamburger
• Gyro meat
• Feta cheese
• Raw onions
• Caramelized onions
• Tomato slices
• Spinach
• Tzatziki
• Buns or Pitas

Step 1: Hard boil eggs

If you need assistance hard boiling eggs, then you need more help in life than this recipe can give. Anyway, fill a pot with water that’s above the top of the eggs in the pot. Bring to a boil. Turn the water off and cover. Let it hang out for about 14 minutes. Drain and put them in the fridge for a few hours. Older eggs are going to peel better. Newer eggs may have the shell stick to the egg while you peel them making them look like extras in an Easter Zombie flick.

How many eggs should you make? Hmmm. Well, you’ll need two for the macaroni salad and then at least two more eggs for deviling and probably five more for testing purposes. Round up, carry the one and a dozen is probably safe for two people.

Step 2: Make the macaroni salad

Follow the instructions on the box to cook the macaroni. For the two of us, I do a quarter to half of the box depending on how many consecutive days we want to open the fridge and go “Uggh, more macaroni salad. Is this ever going to end?”

While the water is coming to a boil, cut up a small onion or half a large onion. The size of the pieces should be in inverse proportion to how easy you want it to be for your spouse to pick them out.

After draining the elbows, toss them in a large bowl while still warm. Dump in the onions along with two of the eggs (diced). Side note: If you want this to look fancy for a party, you can slice the eggs, cover them in paprika and place them on top of the finished product. While we might have all the time in the world right now, generally I just don’t bother. No one complains and it eats the same.

Now for the hard part. Dump in a bunch of mayo and a little bit of mustard. Mix it all up. Taste it. Add more mayo and/or mustard until the mixture is creamy and tangy at the same time. The ratio isn’t exact and it’s not like rocket science where we keep losing engineers to tasting rocket fuel. Make this enough times and you’ll know when it’s close to done by its dull yellow color.

Cover and refrigerate until cold.

Step 3. Make the deviled eggs

For whatever reason, people seem to LOVE LOVE LOVE my deviled eggs. Probably because I’m the guy who brings the deviled eggs to every party and I don’t ruin them by putting a bunch of crap in them.

Anyway, cut the eggs in half – longways, you guys AND DON’T FORGET TO PEEL THE EGGS FIRST. Put the yolk in a bowl and set the hollowed-out whites on a plate. Mix the yolks with mayo and mustard to taste—follow the same guidelines as making the macaroni salad.

My mother would whip the mixture making them super creamy. I prefer to use a fork and spatula because I prefer it rougher and find the occasional yolk nugget to be pleasurable. It’s like the only time you want your eggs to be chunky.

Fill the first egg with the mixture. Eat it to make sure it’s good. Fill a second egg. Call your significant other in to conduct further quality assurance. If you are sheltering alone, it’s cool to test the second one yourself. If you have a dog, do not give the dog an egg unless you enjoy asphyxiation.

Put the eggs in the refrigerator to cool. If you are going to consume them in the next few hours, you don’t really need to cover them. However, if you don’t want to run the risk of rogue eggs falling off the plate and plummeting to their doom, cover the eggs. Okay, good talk.

Step 4: Caramelize onions

My partner is good at a great many things, but enjoying raw onions isn’t one of them. So any time we have something that I think requires onions, I’ll caramelize some for her as a treat. It’s super easy, even if it’s a little time-consuming.

Cut up one big-ass onion, or a couple of smaller onions into slices—the outermost slice being about the size of your middle finger. Take a second and extend just your middle finger, examine it closely, look at it from the backside. Okay, good. You should have enough onions to more than cover the bottom of a frying pan.

Set the burner to medium-high heat. Put in about a tablespoon of oil. Once it’s shimmering, put the onions on top. Add about two shots of water and some sugar to aid in the caramelization process. How much sugar? I’m not sure, we’ve had these fancy Chinese sugar chunks for a decade and I toss like three in. Maybe two teaspoons.

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Let the onions cook away, every five to ten minutes flip them over. If it looks like they are starting to burn to the pan, add more water and scape that stuff off the bottom of the pan until it dissolves. As they start to brown and caramelize, you can turn the heat down. Keep cooking until they are brown all the way through and smell sweet.

Step 5: Make the Juicy Loúsi

Take the ground beef and make patties. However, make each patty half the size you normally would because you’re gonna mush them together eventually.

In one-half patty, make a dent in the middle (think of it like you are filling a deviled egg), make that dent as big as you want. Fill that hole with gyro meat and then cover with feta cheese. Take the non-dented pattie and place it on top. Mush them together making it one burger. Be sure to fully seal the burger while cooking.

We’ve also made two traditional Juicy Lucys with cheddar cheese because when this is all over, Pandemic Arteries are totally going to be a thing, you guys.

Cook the burgers to your liking. Normally a recipe blog would tell you an internal temperature, but you can’t take an internal temperature of a Juicy Lucy because then all the cheese would leak out making it a sad, hollow, hamburger, which, come to think of it, is kind of like my soul. I like my ground beef cooked to medium-well or well-done. Anything less makes me worry about exigent poops. And I know what you are thinking, Exigent Poops sounds like a fantastic band name, but believe me when I say, “no, no it is not.”

While cooking your burgers to taste, cut up some raw onion and tomato slices. Also, in a skillet cook a few pieces of gyro meat to put on the burger like some festive Greek bacon.

Once the Juicy Loúsi is cooked, place on a bun and cover with onions (raw or caramelized), tomatoes, more feta, more gyro meat, spinach and tzatziki. Also, put some more deviled eggs and macaroni salad on the plate.

Step 5: Eat dinner (please read before eating)

Normally, I wouldn’t provide instructions on how to eat and if you’ve seen my Taco Tuesday shirt, you know I haven’t necessarily mastered the eating process.

Okay, here goes. Eat the macaroni salad and deviled eggs first. If you made French fries or onion rings, eat those first. Top the Tater and Fritos? FINISH THEM! Eat any and everything that isn’t a Juicy Lucy on the plate first. Your life depends on it!

Now, the Juicy Loúsi is safer than other Juicy Lucys because feta doesn’t really melt. That said, it’s good to practice safety. Once you’ve eaten everything else on your plate, poke a hole in the Juicy Loúsi and check to see if steam is coming out. If there isn’t, maybe nibble at a non-exesitant corner because the burger is round (I don’t know I am not a geometrist, you guys). I really just do not want you to get burned by the cheese. If everything seems safe, go ahead and eat your Juicy Loúsi. You’ve earned it.

Good Curling!

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this blog, please consider picking up a copy of my book, Bare Bones Stones: A Welcome Guide to Curling on Amazon. It’s a great way to pass the time during shelter-at-home. Even better, buy a copy for that annoying friend who doesn’t know anything about curling but keeps posting every animated curling GIF on the Internet to your Facebook timeline.

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