Today, I am tackling my favorite fast food burger: the Sourdough Jack.
Containing only one vegetable, this delectable and high calorie treat makes up for it with with butter soaked sourdough bread and lots of bacon. It was my burger of choice as a young drinker, post-pescetarian days. With a little help from Whole Foods my sister and I, Dakota, will create a vegetarian remix of this sandwich here today.
Original ingredients include (from the Jack-in-the-Box site).: "Beef patty topped with bacon, tomato, Swiss-style cheese, Mayo-Onion sauce, and ketchup on toasted sourdough bread."
First things first, we had to head down to the local Whole Foods because I figured that Whole Foods would have the most variety in terms alternative meat and dairy products. The biggest challenge I foresaw was the swiss cheese, as I have never seen or heard of a soy "swiss" cheese before.
Speaking of Whole Foods:
Here's an example of what keeping it real in the Whole Foods parking lot looks like:
And it appears that in my state, the shopping carts are of moderate size.
Once I got home I realized that the Rice cheese was not vegan as it has casein in it, which is somewhat infuriating whenever that happens. If you are going to make a cheese alternative, why not remove all the dairy elements completely? If they were marketing this product to consumers who wish to reduce their consumption of animal products they have failed, and if they are marketing this product to those with dairy intolerance, they have failed here as well. So considering I have not taken the plunge into a vegan lifestyle, I went ahead and ate the rice cheese, but it was begrudgingly so! If anyone knows where I can aquire vegan swiss cheese comment below. I know it's possible for me to make my own, but anyone who honestly thinks I am going to do that will get this face from me:
As a second aside, let me please note that despite years of debilitating laziness in which all food was microwaved, I went through the trouble cooking everything (burger patty, bacon, and even the toasting of the sourdough bread) on the skillet, and holy shit, I see what everyone's talking about now. That is much, much better. I personally always use a drizzle (for schizzle, my nizzle) of olive oil on my pans to keep things from sticking.
The most important part of re-creating fast food is trying to work with integrity. If they have a slice of cheese on the patty, AND melted on the bottom slice of bread (as does the Sourdough Jack), then YOU SHOULD AS WELL. No cheating. Along those same lines, at least TRY to make it look like the beautiful burgers you see in the commercials. Don't create a fucking Burger Fail like I did:
The results:
I thought it was delicious. It tasted just as it did in my old omnivore memory banks, and it even gave me the illusion of clogging my arteries. I call this mission a success. Even my vegan boyfriend, whom I made a version sans the cursed rice cheese, thought it was delicious.
Dakota's review is as followed: "I like bacon." *said with mouth full, while chewing*
The goal here is to REEEEEEEEEMIXXXX some of our nation's fast food favorites as viable vegetarian or vegan alternatives.
If you're anything like me, you want to do as much as you can in terms of sustainable living, and eating animal products as infrequently as possible is part of that. However, at the same time, if you're STILL anything like me, you're also a little fat kid at heart who needs their nom noms. I missed my juicy "hangover burgers" and the indulgence of fast food, and so I got the idea to re-create my favorite junk food meals at home with over-priced, albeit animal-friendly ingredients.
The idea sprang from my intense cravings for Sourdough Jacks after I took the plunge into pescetarianism some years ago. It was also inspired by the blog Vegansaurus creating a vegan version of KFC's insanity called the Double Down. Whereas both the real and the fake versions of that sandwich look kind of disgusting, I had a feeling I too could, um, make food and eat it. (?)
Anyhow, this blog is created by sisters, Annmarie (the big one) and Dakota (the cute one).
We like the cyberwebz, eating fake junk food, and long walks in the desert (we live in the southwest, and nowhere near water, so that was a joke.)
