Ch 103 -- 100% Wyvern Meat Hamburger

Since we were leaving this city the next day I wanted to prepare a lot of a.s.sorted dishes for the trip. I borrowed the inn"s courtyard again to carry out all the cooking I"d need to do. What to cook though?

Well, I knew deep-fried food was a sure thing for my two companions (and me too of course) so kaarage it was. I started with Red Serpent, Black Serpent, Rockbird and Giant Dodo each with salt and soy sauce marinades. Pork cutlets and the ever-popular cheese IN chicken cutlets were next up. I dug out the remaining ground-up meat from my Item Box and made mincemeat cutlets before deep-frying them too. I experimented by making some mincemeat cutlets with cheese IN since Sui liked cheese. What next? Hamburger? But I had just used up all the ground meat... ah well, I can make more. I fed Orc General meat and b.l.o.o.d.y Horn Bull meat into the mincer and started turning the handle round and round. Eventually my arm hurt but I had a large amount of minced meat ready to use.

"Is this enough?" I shrugged. "Fu ~ I"m tired. It"ll do for now." What next? Remembering the taste of the Wyvern meat from yesterday I thought that cooking it shabu-shabu or sukiyaki hotpot style, thinly-sliced and boiled quickly in soup then dunked in sauce might work. The thick steaks of seared Wyvern meat had been delicious, cooking them that way should be good too. I sliced a lot of Wyvern meat ready to cook shabu-shabu later, piling it up on plates, covering it with clingfilm and storing it back in my Item Box. I reckoned that hotpot would be a welcome change along the way as we travelled.

Slicing the Wyvern meat this way I ended up with a lot of cut-offs. Staring at them I had an inspiration -- I"d make some 100% Wyvern meat hamburgers. I had seen a teevee program once where the presenters turned trims and sc.r.a.ps of Wagyu beef left over from preparation of other gourmet dishes into 100% Wagyu hamburger so me doing it with the leftover Wyvern meat should work the same way. As I remembered it the teevee show presenters put nutmeg in their recipe so I"d follow their example. I don"t usually put nutmeg in hamburgers, it"s not a good idea to just throw everything you might think of into a recipe after all but in this case it was worth a try since I was using such high-quality meat. The presenters had said it improves the flavour after all. I didn"t have any nutmeg to hand since I don"t normally use it in cooking so I bought some on Net Super.

First I chopped up some onions finely, fried them until they were well-browned and then set them aside to cool. I didn"t run the Wyvern meat through the mincer, instead I chopped it up with a sharp knife. If I minced it too finely the fatty marbling in the meat would make it fall apart when it was fried.

I"m a true believer of the "onions in hamburger" faction so I stirred lots of browned onions into the roughly-chopped Wyvern meat. The chopped meat might seem a little bit lumpy to some hamburger enthusiasts but I reckoned it would add to the taste since you"d be exposed to the texture of the meat a little. I added breadcrumbs and egg for a binder and some nutmeg, salt and pepper to finish and stirred the mixture thoroughly before rolling it into b.a.l.l.s and pressing them flat to make patties.

I cooked some of the patties, about a minute at medium heat and then at low heat for about 4 minutes then flipped them and repeated that cooking on the other side. I added some sake and ketchup to the sauce as usual before covering the pan to steam the meat but this time I included some b.u.t.ter too. I figured it would complement the tenderness of the Wyvern meat.

"Right then, where have Fer and Sui got to..." I wondered, looking up from the stove as the hamburgers finished cooking.

"Ahem." "Aruji-". They were both waiting right behind me. What a surprise. Not.

"Here you are." I dished out some 100% Wyvern meat hamburgers which they immediately started to eat.

"Umu."

"Wow - it looks delicious-"

They both began to eat 100% Wyvern meat hamburger. Watching them I couldn"t stop myself from eating some too since I knew from bitter experience there"d be little left for me if this was a success. Memories of three meagre pieces of kaarage between two slices of bread floated through my mind as I took my first bite of the hamburger.

Wow, the juicy hamburger overflowed with gravy. The roughly-chopped texture of the meat felt good in the mouth. It"s a pain to chop up meat with a knife rather than mince it but it definitely added to the enjoyable flavour of the hamburger.

"Mmmm, is this Wyvern meat?" Fer inquired.

"Oh, that"s right, you can taste the delicious Wyvern meat, we can eat it like this too?" Sui chimed in.

"Sure, it"s delicious isn"t it? Because the meat"s chopped up you can feel the firm taste."

"Yeah yeah, this is delicious~. Sui wants more."

"Me too." said Mister Redundant.

I started cooking more 100% Wyvern meat hamburgers for Fer and Sui (and myself). In the end all the surplus Wyvern meat cutoffs and trims that I had planned to store in my Item Box for the forthcoming trip had been turned into 100% Wyvern meat hamburgers and stored in the bellies of Fer and Sui (and me too, of course).

I shrugged, wiping the last of the gravy off my lips. They both ate their fill and the Wyvern meat sc.r.a.ps didn"t go to waste, a double bonus.