Rice Burger Extravaganza

I really wanted to make spaghetti with Italian sausage or linguine alle vongole tonight (since I've been craving those), but instead I took a different approach and decided to do something a little different and familiar at the same time. Using the yaki onigiri rice buns as the jumping off point, I decided to make three different types of rice burgers: gyu tan shio (beef tongue), bulgogi, and gyuniku. For those that don't know, none of Mos Burger's rice burger options have a conventional hamburger patty, despite the name. So instead of doing traditional burger patties this time, I used all sliced meats.

The gyu tan shio rice burger had thin slices of beef tongue salted and peppered and covered liberally with sliced green onion, chopped garlic, and fresh squeezed lemon juice. Gyu tan shio is usually found in yakiniku restaurants. It's very fresh tasting, and as such made an excellent rice burger. I would have preferred to have used Japanese sliced tongue, since it's a little bit thicker than the Korean market's offering, though.

I also bought a ready-to-cook package of bulgogi, which I cooked and drained for use in the bulgogi rice burger. I made it like how Mos Burger does it, with the meat tucked into a red lettuce leaf. It's already been tested and marketed, so I was assured it would be delicious.

Since I didn't buy enough sliced beef at the market, I used some frozen pork loin slices from home to make the gyuniku. The meat should have been fattier, but most of the packages at the market were lean. It was the sloppiest of the three rice burgers, since the onion retained a lot of juice. One suggestion was to wrap the entire burger in a lettuce leaf rather than just wrapping the meat, which I plan to explore in the future.

From left to right: gyu tan shio rice burger, bulgogi rice burger, gyuniku rice burger.

Out of the three, my favorite was the gyu tan shio rice burger, with the bulgogi a close second, and the gyuniku a distant third. I plan to do a little more experimenting with this in the future, since it seems to be a delicious idea so far untapped in the U.S.