Dec 24, 20205 min
Updated: May 27, 2021
“What did you do?” “You wanted something festive.” “You made me a Santa burger” “It’s no big deal.” “He has a hat and everything.”
Ingredients:
1 grilled burger patty
2 white burger buns
¾ cup (give or take) of mayonnaise
¼ cup ketchup
1 roma tomato
2 sliced olives
Directions
Grill your burger patty the way you prefer. I used salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder to season mine. Set aside.
Place one half of one of the burger buns down on a plate.
Cut the other half right down the middle and place below the first half of the bun. Place the other half on top of the first bun. Both of the flat edges of the second half should be touching the whole half (see below for a photo because this is confusing to explain).
Using a knife, cut out your desired hat shape out of the first half of the second bun. Use any remaining pieces of the first half or any of the second half of the second bun to add to the hat or fill in areas that might need more support. You can put a small piece of bun at the end of your hat bun to create a cotton ball for your hat. Basically, just use what pieces of burger bun to make your desired Santa shape. We’re not going for perfect here, people.
Place the burger patty on top of the first (and only whole) bun half.
Put the mayonnaise into a piping mag (a ziploc with the tip cut off works too) and pipe onto the lower bun half to create the Santa beard. Pipe out a moustache and the rest of the beard across the burger patty.
Pipe more mayonnaise on the top piece of the second bun half to create Santa’s hair. You might need to refill your piping bag with more mayonnaise. If you added another piece of bun for a cotton ball on the tip of the hat, be sure to pipe mayonnaise here too!
Squirt ketchup onto the bun piece you made into the hat. If your ketchup isn’t in a squirt bottle, you can put it into a new piping bag or spread carefully with a knife.
Cut out a nose and mouth shape from the tomato and place onto the burger patty.
Place the olives on the patty to create Santa’s eyes.
Well if that wasn’t the most complicated recipe to explain... If you have not attempted a Santa burger before, it’s mostly guess work. And as I mentioned above, it doesn’t have to be perfect...it’s a Santa burger for crying out loud! My local store didn’t have any stuffed green olives, so I had to make do with black ones, which honestly makes the Santa look really creepy, but so be it. I don’t even like olives, so it didn’t really matter what I used because I was not going to eat them regardless. I also don’t like ketchup, so I didn’t consume that part either. And let’s be real, I love mayonnaise, but I’m not going to consume it in these quantities. In the episode, Luke pipes cream cheese to create the Santa burger, which I don’t know why when mayo is a better pairing for a burger and is also white.
The Santa burger is not about taste. As Lorelai says, “no one has ever made me something quite this disgusting before.” That being said, I definitely snapped my photos and ate the burger on fresh, clean buns. Instead, the Santa burger is about a true gesture of love. It’s no secret that Luke’s love language is acts of service. From building an ice skating rink in Lorelai’s backyard to teaching her how to fish in a kiddie pool, Luke is always doing something for Lorelai to show her his love, and the Santa burger is no exception. Then he goes to the next level by taking Lorelai to the hospital to see Richard.
Speaking of which, we need to talk about the hospital scenes. These, of course, are much more heartbreaking in rewatches after the Netflix revival and Ed Herman’s passing at the end of 2014 (has it really been that long?!), especially Emily demanding to go first. I wish that scene would have come around again in A Year in the Life with Emily saying she was supposed to go first. Although, it was sad enough even without revisiting that line.
However, the Emily in the hospital scene I don’t exactly love is her tirade at Jane Lynch’s character. I get that she’s scared, but does that justify yelling at a hospital worker? Do you think that’s justified? That scene has already bothered me, but I think it does even more so in 2020 just knowing how healthcare workers have been treated during the pandemic.
Again, speaking of which, has the pandemic affected your holiday plans? Normally, this is my favorite time of the year, but it’s been really hard watching so many people I know completely disregard covid safety protocol and gather with people outside of their households, but I’m trying to have hope with the vaccine. My sister and I have quite a few Christmas traditions and since we live together, we’re actually able to still do most of them. We like to make a blanket fort in our living room and spend a day watching the really cheesy Christmas movies. Last year, we made a bingo card to play along with while we watched the movies, which we fully intend to do again this year.
We always order Chinese food to eat while we drive around to look at Christmas lights. The first year we did this, we were just hungry and grabbed some noodles to eat while we looked at the lights. I said, “this feels like it could be a tradition,” and so it did! We also started doing Hobnobs and Baileys instead of milk and cookies. The British digestive biscuits are perfect when dunked in a cold glass of Baileys. And for the last five years, we’ve always picked out matching pajamas to wear on Christmas morning.
This year is going to look a lot different. We always stay at our parents’ house for a few days, but this year, we’re going to spend just a few hours distanced in the backyard with face masks on. I wrote about how I hosted a virtual Christmas party this year, and I didn’t get to go with my best friend to a cabin in Beavers Bend in Oklahoma like we wanted to. Christmas this year has made (some of) us be truly grateful for what we do have and focus on creating the memories we are able to. It’s just hard when the memories you want to make are with people you can’t be with.
Stay tuned for a little Christmas surprise I have planned!
Happy Holidays and Happy Cooking!
If you missed what I made last episode, catch up here!