Blue Steaks

Whoever first had the idea of combining blue cheese with chopped beef must be memorialized in a museum of culinary arts somewhere. If not, he or she should be. The combination is wonderful. I first had this steak at a small supper club near Eagle River, Wisconsin in the summer of 1961. I made my first blue steaks about three weeks later when I went home to visit my family.

The steaks were not a great success. My father, though born and raised in Wisconsin, didn’t like cheese, my mother thought that all hamburger should be fried until it withered in defeat and back then my sisters didn’t like anything I cooked. But if I do say so myself those blue steaks were almost as good as the one I had at the supper club, so I kept making them.

There are many recipes for hamburgers garnished with a blue cheese sauce and a few with blue cheese fillings that include ingredients such as garlic, onion, sour cream and various spices. I have eaten such, and they are often quite tasty, but in this instance I think that simpler is better. I like to make these large enough to serve as a steak, six to eight ounces. Could we call them diet blue burgers?

INGREDIENTS

Extra lean ground beef
Blue or gorgonzola cheese
Steak seasoning

PROCEDURE

Size the steaks according to appetite. For each steak, make two thin patties of meat. Put a layer of blue cheese in the center of one patty, top with the other patty, seal the edges well and sprinkle lightly with steak seasoning or salt and pepper. Grill over charcoal to the desired doneness; for medium to medium well, grill three to four minutes on one side, turn over and grill another three to four minutes. Serve with a garden salad, baked potato, and fresh green peas for an elegant, inexpensive dinner.

NOTE

Let diners add more seasoning or steak sauce if they wish. One nice thing about this steak is that you can vary the amount of cheese to suit individual tastes. For an eight ounce steak, I use about two tablespoons.

When it is cold and nasty outside, I fry these delicacies in a hot cast iron skillet coated lightly with cooking spray. They still taste pretty good.