It feels like the days and weeks are rather differently punctuated at the moment. While 12 months ago I might have been centring my diary around days out, meals with friends and even trips to different cities, at the moment the coffee machine has seen its status raised to that of a daily landmark. With that low bar of excitement duly set, it’s unsurprising that meals are high watermarks of most days, and events that we seek to augment and accentuate with the help of meal kits as frequently as possible. One to catch my eye was a burger delivery kit from Patty & Bun, who promise top notch burgers to enjoy in the home setting with minimal fuss.
If you’re looking for silver linings, and aren’t we all at the moment, then the opportunity to enjoy meals from geographically diverse restaurants is one to grab with both hands, reflected nicely by Patty & Bun’s southern stomping ground. Their burger delivery kit offers the core ingredients needed to replicate their beef or vegan burgers with just a couple of recommended fresh additions to pick up, not that there’re any restrictions on your imagination to embellish the finished product in whatever way you see fit. The kit for 2 burgers rounds out to around £20 (I saved a few quid with a discount code) including delivery, which is pretty fair to make something of an event of an evening in this barren stretch. I’ve been lucky with deliveries throughout this pandemic so far (how’s that for tempting fate?) and that run continued with the product arriving in good condition and as promised, with packaging and instructions looking smart and easily digestible.
You might think there isn’t much nuance in cooking and assembling a burger, but each occasion on which your thumb has penetrated the bun, sauce drooled itself onto your top or the whole thing crumbled into constituent parts after over zealous filling betrays an opportunity to compromise your enjoyment. The instructions provided make a good fist of steering you away from making any such faux-pas with tips such as to bisect the bun above the equator for a solid footing efficient layering of fillings. Cooking the patties themselves inevitably relies on an element of personal judgement given you’ll be using your own equipment, the guidance being to sear for 4 minutes on each side though. I measured them at 40c internally after that (a probe thermometer is inexpensive and indispensable in my view) so gave it a few more minutes before popping under the grill to melt the cheese. Perhaps that step would have taken the core temp to something I was more comfortable with but my attempt didn’t end up overcooked or dry regardless. Incidentally, 1 sheet of the included cheese per patty is probably enough, though an excess of cheese is something I’ve never regretted to date. Having fried the included bacon in the fat from the beef while the cheese melted we were ready for assembly.
The final eating was comfortably beyond the standard of anything I’ve put together from anything available in a supermarket, the standard of the ingredients and consideration to balance between the onions, sauce, bacon and texture of the bun clearly evident. The amount of cheese I’d subjected them to did make them look faintly ludicrous but that’s hardly a flaw, perhaps I’d have also gotten more from them with a bit more planning to include some more outlandish ingredients but these really did a great impression of a high end burger joint.
As long as you have to cook and clean for yourself, a recipe kit is only going to approximate dining out so much, but that’s as good as it gets for those of us unable to afford a private chef (a debatable indulgence in a pandemic it must be said) right now. Twenty quid for the bits you need to eek an evening’s entertainment from a couple of top quality burgers is a bargain to be savoured and an indulgence I’d recommend without reservation. As soon as more travel is practical I’ll be curious to try a Patty & Bun burger as prepared by the pro’s for the sake of comparison.
