BBQ Cheeseburgers and Baked Onion Rings

How was your Memorial Day weekend? Did you have a cookout? Patrick and I visited all of our DC friends. Both of us have college friends that relocated to the area after graduation and it makes a wonderful weekend trip to visit them.

Special thanks to Jake and Drew, who were our hosts in the city.
On our way up Saturday we made a pitstop at Drew's lakehouse and had lots of funs with his family.
On Sunday we had a nice afternoon brunch with Patrick's Chicago childhood friend, Patrick, and dinner with Jake and Will.
On Sunday we spent the day with Christine, Holly, Kasper, and Zach. We had lots to celebrate! Congratulations to Christine & Kasper on their engagement! And to Holly and Zach for each securing new fancy jobs!
Then on our way home Tuesday we were able to have dinner with Granny, Poppa, and my parents at the lake!
Our holiday weekend was filled with lots of friends and family, good times, and of course food.

Anyway back to the cookout part. Patrick and I had this meal last month but I thought it was appropriate for the kick-off of summer since the side was onion rings! I loosely followed this Martha Stewart Baked Onion Rings recipe but Patrick thought a quick pan fry would be just as efficient as the baking.

Onion Rings from Martha Stewart
   Ingredients
1 1/2 cups cornflakes (we omitted this)
1/2 cup plain dried breadcrumbs
1 large egg
1/2 cup low-fat buttermilk
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1 medium sweet onion, such as Vidalia, quartered crosswise and broken into rings (discard small center rings)
2 tablespoons olive oil

Directions
   Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a food processor, pulse cornflakes and breadcrumbs until fine crumbs form, then transfer to a medium bowl. In another medium bowl, whisk together egg, buttermilk, flour, and cayenne and season with salt and pepper. We added in some fresh chives to both mixtures.

   Dip onion rings in egg mixture (letting excess drip off) and dredge in breadcrumb mixture; place on a large plate. Pour oil onto a rimmed baking sheet. Place in oven and heat 2 minutes. Remove sheet from oven and tilt to coat evenly with oil. Arrange onion rings on sheet. Bake, turning once, until onion rings are golden brown, about 16 minutes. Season with salt.**
**This was from the baked recipe procedure. We warmed a small amount of canola oil in a large nonstick skillet and cooked the onion rings until they had browned on each side.

Special thanks to Santa (aka Mom) for our mini spatula. This was perfect for turning onion rings.

The onion rings were obviously the star of this meal. But the burger was pretty good too!
We mixed lean ground beef with a chopped onion, squirt of bbq sauce, and some seasonings.

We pattied them out and then grilled them on our grill pan. Look at these nice grill lines.

Finally we topped the burgers we sauteed mushrooms.

Happy cookouts! What's one of your favorite sides?