The COVID Chronicles #11: Nori-wrapped Rice Burgers w/ Spinach

I had been craving hamburgers for awhile now because they are a comfort food for me in these stressful & uncertain times, hence the reason I sneaked off to BK a couple of weeks ago.

Wife is trying to avoid gluten in her diet, so having traditional hamburger buns is not a healthy option for her. So last night we compromised and we made hamburgers with rice buns.

I got the idea from a Tasty recipe video titled Japanese-style Fried Chicken Rice Burger and adapted it for burgers.

1. We defrosted about ~3/4 of a pound of hamburger meat and I finely chopped a 1/4 of a large onion to mix in with the meat. 
2. After mixing in the onion by hand, I made a ball of meat about the size of a baseball (1/4lb) for each burger patty and pressed the ball into the burger press. 
3. We used a plastic hamburger press that we had purchased from Amazon (click here for the product description) to form the patties for the hamburger and the rice patty buns. 
4. The hamburger patties were covered lightly in pepper and pink salt. 
5. The hamburger patties were cooked in a pre-heated cast iron skillet lightly coated in olive oil (~3Tbs) in a 400 F degrees oven for ~20 minutes. 

Wife prepared the rice patty buns: 

1. We made a fresh batch of rice in our rice cooker
2. She removed about 4 scoops of rice with her rice spatula and mixed in parmesan cheese (you can use the ingredients from the Tasty recipe I already shared). 
3. We used the same burger press to form the buns that we used to form the burger patties (after washing it of course!)
4. Wife browned the buns in a pre-heated hot skillet with sesame oil. 

After topping our burgers with more thinly sliced onion and baby spinach leaves, we wrapped the entire burger in a sheet of smoked seaweed, called "nori" and enjoyed. 

Our veggies were frozen green beans we heated up in the microwave.

Here some pictures...

Hamburger patties. 

Rice Buns ready for browning

The finished product