Making burgers with Josh Ozersky

If you recall my post from yesterday, I mentioned that Josh Ozersky would be at the Columbus Home and Garden Show on Thursday of this week.  I got the chance to attend his burger making demo and had a great time!

Amy Weirick was my contact for the evening and I met up with her as I was making my way towards the demo pavilion.  She told me to go right on back through the curtains and introduce myself to Tara, who was working with Amy, and to Josh.

I did just that and I think I surprised everybody!  I tend to have that affect on folks.

I introduced myself and my blog and then introduced Scott.  He was in charge of picture taking for the evening.

They were in the midst of making burgers when I entered backstage and I got a first hand demonstration from Josh on how to make his favorite burgers.  We got to taste two, a cheeseburger and then an onion cheeseburger.

I apologize for lack of pictures of this part! It was dark and we were eating burgers at the time.

It was time for the demo to start and Josh explained briefly how the burger got started and why he loves it.  He also talked to the audience about his three choices of muscle meats that make up his burgers.  He had all three cuts of meats out that he was going to cook up and have all of us in the audience taste.  However the demo stage range wasn’t cooperating fully and those plans got kiboshed.

During the whole demo, Josh was also fielding questions from the audience about his burgers, favorite styles, and his meat choices.

Then Josh went into detail about how to make the perfect burger and I can assure you that the technique isn’t what you are thinking at all.  I was totally surprised and it made me want to head home and make some burgers!

He demoed each of his burgers, the cheeseburger and onion burger, twice, then he brought out samples for the audience.  I have to tell you that the onion burger is my favorite style.  Simple and so very delicious.  The onion burger he created was his first public demonstration of how to make it.  Go Columbus!

He then went on to explain a third burger to us, his version of the Maid-Rite.  Do you know what a Maid-Rite is?

Nobody in the audience did except for me, so I got to go up and explain them! Maid-Rite is a loose meat sandwich of ground beef, which conceptually is like a sloppy-joe except it doesn’t have a tomato based sauce. There are lots of different recipes out there and Josh’s version has beer in it, which you know I’m all about.

He passed those out to the audience too however Scott and I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to taste them.  I should have asked some of the audience members what they thought about it!  I had sloppy-joes and different versions of loose-meat sandwiches a lot growing up.

Josh’s demo was just over an hour and was completely informative on how to make burgers and that the cuts of meats are just as important as well.

I was able to get a chance to speak with him again after the show and thanked him for taking the time to chat with me and show me his burger technique.  He wanted us to have burgers in the photo but there were none to be had so he quickly grabbed a cookie for a prop.

Then we moved to the stage which had better more appropriate props!

Foodies clearly should be holding kitchen implements in photos and ours just happened to be sharp and pointy!

I had a great time at the event and I have Amy to thank for it!

I’ll be talking more about Josh’s burger techniques in some upcoming posts so keep on the lookout for those!

You can find Josh on his website and his twitter page.  If you at all interested in burger making and the history of the burger, snag his book!

5 thoughts on “Making burgers with Josh Ozersky

  1. Steve in Manhattan says:

    Cruising around some old Ozersky recipes, deciding what to make next – never met him, but what a personality. We had several social media exchanges. A great loss. I am @blogenfreude on Twitter, to put this in context.

    • Hey Steve, thanks for dropping by! Yeah, when I met him, he was such a nice guy. Didn’t even think twice about having a blogger hang around which was such a lovely feeling. :)

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