Gochujang-Roasted Carrots and Brussels Sprouts

I love gochujang, that somewhat spicy, funky, thick and sticky, fermented Korean paste of red chiles, glutinous rice, soy, and barley. Although many people would find gochujang highly spicy, in my world, it's pretty mild as spicy things go.

Gochujang-Roasted Carrots and Brussels Sprouts,
Ann: "Damn it! You're Trying to Get Me to Eat Vegetables!"

Back during the height of COVID sequestration, I started toying with the idea of gochujang and carrots, using those carrots as a base for a fish dish. Initially, I tossed the carrots in a gochujang-based sauce before roasting them, but in more recent iterations, I have taken to roasting the carrots first, then tossing them in the sauce after cooking, à la Buffalo wings. I prefer this method because I can roast the carrots just to doneness without having to worry about the sauce burning in the high heat of the oven.

Last night, in expanding on the theme I decided to do a strictly vegetarian dish of roasted carrots and brussels sprouts in gochujang sauce over rice. From the get-go, Ann was asking, "What protein are you going to serve that on?" She's not quite of the "if it's not meat, it's not a meal" ilk, but vegetarian is harder for her than for me. I could happily live on vegetables without any meat at all, but that would really test Ann's limits.

Gochujang Sauce

My new iteration of gochujang sauce shows some evolution from the original as well. Last night, I mixed a lot of gochujang with a little rice vinegar, some agave nectar to balance, a little soy for salt, a touch of sesame oil for complexity, and finely minced garlic. A couple of tablespoons of warm water helped make the sauce fluid enough. This would make a really tasty Buffalo wing sauce, come to think of it.

Sweet Potatoes

Man, the restaurant life really sapped my enthusiasm for cooking! My love for the kitchen, even to this day, has not recovered and I retired from the business five and a half years ago. I used to think nothing of spending joyful hours in the kitchen, but now there are days when I can barely be bothered to go back in the kitchen for two minutes to throw together a ham sandwich.

Kitchen Mojo: Sweet Potato Cakes, Pork Tenderloin, Cole Slaw, Chipotle Honey

Just after retirement from the restaurant, I had no love for the kitchen. But these days some five-plus years hence, my love of cooking comes and goes. In the last ten days or so, my kitchen mojo is finally on the wax, at least temporarily. That's a good thing in that I have accumulated of a bit of winter fat and I need to eat better. Also, my body is longing for fresh vegetables, something that it quite usual for me in this cold vegetable-challenged season. That longing in part spurs me to action in the kitchen.

Though many vegetables are now available 365 days a year, thanks to a worldwide supply chain, old habits die hard with me. I try to use ingredients only in season, though I have relented a bit from this imperative in recent years. Back in the restaurant days, as a seasonal restaurant supplied by local farmers, we were limited in winter to storage vegetables from the previous growing season, our farmers bringing us only the tiniest amount of fresh produce from their expensive-to-heat greenhouses.

Winter therefore meant sweet potatoes, bushels and bushels of sweet potatoes. Out of necessity, we had to find creative ways to use them so as not to bore ourselves or customers. Fortunately, the sweet potato is as equally useful as a regular potato and therefore lends itself to a myriad of preparations: boiled, mashed, baked, chips, fries, grated for latkes, and even hashed.

Exercising all my creativity, at one point during my restaurant career, I hit upon a sweet potato hash that quickly became a customer favorite when accompanying our Berkshire x Ossabaw pork, wild boar, Moulard duck, or any of the venison that would come and go on the menu throughout the course of the winter: red deer, white tail, caribou, or elk.

The hash at the restaurant would have started in a vast sauté pan with cubes of our slab bacon, or house-cured pancetta if we were between slabs of bacon, cooked just enough to release a bit of fat. Into the sauté pan would go diced onion and cubes of raw sweet potato. Like any hash, it would stay on the flame until the bacon was rendered, the onions browned, and the sweet potato cooked all the way through.

I have never been one to like sweet food (I'm that guy who does not eat dessert) and I have always frowned on sweet sweet potato preparations. Properly cured sweet potatoes have enough natural sweetness on their own that they really don't need any added sugar, except perhaps if they are being served as a dessert course. But I do make a slight exception for my sweet potato hash.

Just as the hash is cooked is where the sweetness comes in, though not via added sugar (at least not raw sugar). At this point, we'd add dried sweetened cranberries (or cherries) and then flambé the whole shebang with a good slug of Bourbon. Ann is not a fan of the sweet woody and vanilla notes that the Bourbon imparts nor has she ever been a fan of fruit in savory dishes. But this hash ticks my boxes: creative, savory, smoky, and oh so tasty.  For more on the hash technique see here and here.

I have finally got enough distance from the restaurant and its sea of winter sweet potatoes to want to prepare sweet potatoes again at home. So, to accompany a roast pork tenderloin, I made this hash again, omitting the bacon to keep the dish a bit healthier. In spite of Ann not being a big fan, every once in a while, I make a dish because I like it. My usual MO is to only cook the things that I know that Ann loves. Mea culpa.

I actually cooked two tenderloins and put the second one in the fridge along with a small amount of leftover hash, the perfect starting point for a leftover-based dish the next evening. But how to change it up so that it would be different enough from the night before? I didn't have enough hash left to serve one person, let alone two, so I thought about ways to stretch it. And it occurred to me that if I roasted a sweet potato, mashed it, and incorporated the leftover hash into the mash, I could make sweet potato cakes.

I find myself using rolled oats instead of bread crumbs or panko to bind things these days: meatloaf, meatballs, potato cakes, and so forth. The results are fantastic and to my mind, at least, the complex carbs in rolled oats are a healthier option than the more simple bread carbs. Although I put a little panko on the surface of the sweet potato cakes to yield a nice crust, I bound the cakes with oats.

Sweet Potato Cakes, Bound with Rolled Oats

Once I had made the sweet potato cakes and put them in the refrigerator to set up, the full dish came together in my mind: sweet potato cakes, thinly sliced pork tenderloin, a bit of my vinegar-based cole slaw that is always in the fridge, and a drizzle of spicy chipotle-honey (chipotle purée, honey, water to thin, and salt to taste).

At least temporarily, my kitchen mojo is back and functioning at a decent level and I'm still making good use of winter storage vegetables: sweet potatoes, onions, cabbage, and carrots. And Ann is going to forgive my use of sweet dried fruit and Bourbon in the sweet potato cakes.

Bend Smashburger Smash-Off

Update August 2023

Since Ann and I did our initial tasting of Bend smashburgers in January 2023, some things have changed and some have not. Americana is still crushing it at Podski. Willieburger bought a new cart which has taken up quasi-permanence at the Deschutes Brewery; they are no longer at Boss Rambler. 

MidCity left the traffic-poor and landlocked Boneyard location downtown for the richer environs over at Hayden Homes Amphitheater for the summer concert series while searching for a new location elsewhere. They appear to have settled on the parking lot at the Waypoint Hotel (Olney and 3rd) for after the concert season ends.

As for these three, nothing has changed with respect to quality: everything we said before holds, except that we find the burgers at Americana have a better crust than ever, solidifying them firmly as the burger to beat in town. Willieburger is right up there with Americana and it will come down to your personal preference as to which is better than the other. MidCity remains a far distant third.

Also, Blue Eyes has finally got their retail act together and are slinging smashies daily over near Pilot Butte (7th and Greenwood). They also have a cart that is currently at Boss Rambler where Willieburger used to be. Sadly, Blue Eyes burgers, while very large and with a nice crust, have very little flavor. At $11 for a single and $13 for a double, the quality to value ratio isn't there. Also, their fries are strange: I have never had a tough fry until I visited Blue Eyes.

Finally, Bend Brewing launched a smashburger on their new post-renovation menu. It is a good burger, not in Americana and Willie territory, but way above Blue Eyes and MidCity. It's a bit spendy at $15, though that's not a bad price considering what real estate costs right downtown on the river.

TL;DR

After coming to love smashburgers in the last year, Ann and I set about finding the best smashburger in Bend, regardless of price or size. The Americana Truck's OG burger takes the crown, barely edging out the Willieburger double. Despite coming in behind the other two, the MidCity Smashburger Smashy Boi is a great burger if you're in the neighborhood. Details below.

Old Dog Learning New Tricks

As a retired fine dining restaurant chef/owner, my idea of a hamburger has always been an inch thick and medium rare, a not terribly lean juice bomb with a great toasted bun and simple condiments. Now that I've retired and moved to Bend, burgers that fit my profile are few and far between. In the last year, I've come to know the smashburger, albeit reluctantly at first.

Much to my surprise, I have become something of a smashburger fanatic. This non-traditional burger is pressed with great force onto a flattop such that it becomes a wafer-thin patty. This flat, the burger comes off the flattop well done with a gorgeous maximally crunchy and über-meaty surface.

Although smashburgers are 180 degrees from my once-ideal burger, I have come to love them in the same way that I am coming to love Detroit-style pizza (similar to Roman pizza in teglia), the antithesis of my beloved Neapolitan-style pie. This old dog is learning new tricks!

The Players and Their Burgers

We know of four places in Bend that offer smashburgers and there are probably others as well. For our totally non-scientific survey, we got burgers from The Americana Truck, Willieburger, and MidCity Smashburger. Blue Eyes on Greenwood near Pilot Butte offers a smashburger as well, but they managed to remove themselves from the competition by repeatedly being closed without making any announcement to their would-be customers.

Formerly located at Spider City, The Americana Truck has recently moved to Podski near the Box Factory, occupying a new-to-them gold foodtruck passed on from El Sancho. It is unclear if the original Jesus-muraled truck that we came to love at Spider City will be put back into service some time in 2023.

Number One in Our Taste Test: Americana's OG, $8, 10.3 ounces

Willieburger is a pop-up run by brick-and-mortar restaurant vets. While they were regulars at the NWX Farmers Market during the season, they are currently splitting their time on weekends between Boss Rambler and Deschutes Brewery (Colorado Ave, not the pub downtown). Namesake dog Willie is a cute little guy! Check their Insta feed for their schedule and adorable pics of Willie.

A Very Close Number Two: Willieburger's Double, $11, 8.4 ounces

MidCity is situated in a food cart at the Boneyard tap room on Lake Place, hard on the Parkway in Old Bend, not at the main pub on Division. MidCity opened an offshoot of their Portland business with much fanfare in early 2022 and they do a great job of marketing their product on social media.

Third Place: MidCity's Smashy Boi, $6, 5.6 ounces

While we have eaten a lot of each of these three burgers over the last many months and while we have had our opinions about them, we had never sat down to try all three at the same time, head-to-head. Once we came up with this idea (blatantly ripped off from Podski's burger challenge) this winter, we had to wait for Willieburger to get back from vacation to hold the Smash-Off.

We drove to all three places, ordered a burger to go, kept it in its original packaging until we got home. There, we unwrapped all three burgers, weighed them, and put them in a microwave for 30 seconds to make sure they are were all equally warm.

To be fair, we tested as equivalent and as standard burgers as possible, ordering two patties and no add-ons. All came with cheese, a sauce, and onions. Other toppings vary slightly. The Willieburger comes as a single, so we ordered a double. The OG and SmashyBoi are doubles from the get-go.

We couldn't taste the burgers blind: we are too familiar with them and they are individually too distinctive looking and tasting. Also in the spirit of transparency, see the photo below. What's better with burgers than beer? Several of these are hazy ales and that may have "clouded" our judgement. 

What Better with Burgers?

Evaluation Criteria

We ranked the burgers based on four criteria that are meaningful to us: the bun, the crust on the burger, the onions (all come with onions standard), and the sauce. We did not consider the cheese, because they all have deliciously gooey American-style cheese.

Moreover, we did not use size or price in our evaluations. That is, the Americana Burger would have still topped the rankings at a even higher price. Willie would have come second even at half the price and MidCity would have still placed third at twice the size. 

Buns. Ann and I are sticklers for good buns. It matters that they are good quality and carefully toasted. Americana uses split-top brioche buns that are well-toasted. For this test, the Willieburger came on a standard bun, really well grilled, but we have had brioche buns from them in the past. MidCity had a pretty average bun.

Burger Crust. This is what a smashburger is all about. Willie kills it with a fantastic crust. You will wait the longest time for that killer crust but it is so worth it. Just slightly below this is the Americana crust. When the truck is less busy, sometimes the crust can rival Willie. And MidCity has a decent crust, just not quite as good as the other two. From a technical aspect, I believe the Willieburger crust is due to the cast iron flattop, unique among the three.

Onions. Onions are crucial on burgers for their acidity which helps cleanse the requisite fat from the burger and the cheese from your tongue. In other words, onions help keep each bite of the burger fresh. Willie again kills it with thinly sliced raw onion smashed into the burger. The onions keep a bit of their crunch and acid and help elevate the burger. The other two use caramelized (or at least cooked) onions, which while tasty, do not help the burger.

Sauce. I've always been a mustard guy where burgers are concerned, but mustard is just wrong in the context of a smashburger. Even I can see the error of my ways. I have come to admit that a mayo-based burger sauce can really do wonderful things for a burger. And the number one thing that sets Americana apart from its peers is the burger sauce, redolent of black pepper (Joe later told me the pepper is actually in the onions), whose slightly spicy bite does the same thing for the OG that the onions do for the Willie. Willie has a decent burger sauce, but neither of us were huge fans of the thicker and paler sauce at MidCity.

Burger	Bun	Crust	Onions	Sauce	Overall
Americana OG	1	2	tie 2	1	best
Willieburger Double	2	1	1	2	second, by a nose
MidCity Smashy Boi	3	3	tie 2	3	third

You'll note in the summary chart above that Americana and Willie split top honors in the four categories. But a burger is the sum of all its parts and Ann and I are unanimous (What? We're never unamimous!) that the OG from Americana when taken as a whole is the better burger.

What's more is that Ann and I both agree that a perfect smashburger might be the Willie burger on the Americana bun setup.

I was in the in the business for ages and I hope that nobody feels any disrespect. Ann and I know how damn hard you work and we applaud your efforts. We were just having a little fun in sampling the various burger options and we are very thankful to have those options.