Gravy-Slathered Poutine Burger Recipe

The title may have already tipped you off, or perhaps you've peeped at the picture, but just in case you're still wondering what these burgers are all about; as developer Patterson Watkins explains, they're meant to be "Everything you love about poutine – the gravy, the cheese curds, and the crispy potatoes — remixed into shareable, slider-esque burgers. " Besides simply topping the burgers with gravy and cheese curds, she's also replaced what she calls " boring burger buns" with waffles made from tater tots. These squished and baked tots, she says, "make for some surprisingly scrumptious burger buns and help us keep that poutine aesthetic."

As each burger in this recipe weighs in at just 2 ounces before cooking, Watkins envisions a serving as being made up of a pair of these, although that will obviously vary depending on your appetite. While the entire recipe may not make for great leftovers, if you're dining alone a la Nigella Lawson you can simply make a single waffle and two small burgers. The recipe for onion gravy may be a bit harder to reduce, but you can go ahead and cook up the entire batch and use what you need to top your burgers. The leftover gravy, Watkins tells us, "works well on all other gravy-need[ing] goodies" such as mashed potatoes, chicken, turkey, and roast beef.

As we mentioned, the burger buns are made from nothing but frozen tater tots. The burgers consist of ground beef seasoned with salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper, while the gravy is made from butter, yellow onions, flour, beef broth, Worcestershire sauce, cider vinegar, and Dijon mustard. To top off the burgers, you'll need cheese curds and sliced dill pickles.

Spritz the waffle iron with cooking spray and preheat it. Set the oven to 275 F so it can heat up, as well. When the waffle iron is hot, spread 8 ounces of tater tots evenly across the grates and close the lid to squish them into place. Cook the waffles for 8 minutes, then check on them and give them another 2 minutes or so if necessary. "That first tater tot waffle," says Watkins, "might be a bit wonky," but she says it'll still be able to hold your burger and you probably won't notice any lack of symmetry under all of the toppings.

As each waffle finishes cooking, put it on a wire rack over or on a baking sheet, then stick the sheet in the warm oven. This will keep the waffles from getting cold before you're ready to put the burgers together. Needless to say, if you want eight burgers, you should keep on cooking tater tots until you've used them all up and have four waffles in all.

Mix the ground beef with the salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and pepper and shape it into eight patties of roughly equal size. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a big pan, then fry all of the mini burgers for 3 minutes. Flip the burgers over and cook them for 3 more minutes to brown the other side, then remove them from the pan.

Melt the rest of the butter in that same pan and use it to fry the onions for about 5 minutes. After they've softened a bit, stir in the flour, then follow this up with the broth, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, and mustard.

Once the gravy is simmering, turn the heat down to medium-low and cook it for 10 minutes to thicken it up. If it gets too thick, you can always thin it out with more broth (or water, if you don't have any broth left). Taste the gravy when it's done and add any salt and pepper you feel it may need.

Cut the waffles into quarters, then put each of the burgers on top of its own waffle piece. Divide the gravy and cheese curds between the burgers, then top them with the remaining waffle quarters. As the top waffles may not want to stay in place, you'll need to secure them with a toothpick or skewer. What you can do, however, is transform this functional implement into a decorative element by using it to skewer a pickle slice or two.