Episode 2

Here’s a legendary myth. Is it a pizza? Is it a burger? It’s both! Today we give you, The Pizza Burger!

One of the questions we get asked most when we meet chefs and burger fans is the unanswerable “Which is the best Burger in Malta?”. We think that food is a very individual matter so we can’t tell you which Burger you should eat or like most! Instead, we created our own, out of our combined love for burgers and pizzas!

So what makes a Burger, a Pizza Burger? The creation must represent a classic burger in visual form and have elements or flavours of the traditional pizza. This is disrupting the American burger heritage and the Italian pizza heritage, all in one go! But we’re here to push the threshold of new flavours and food combinations. During the past years, many have promised to create a combination of pizza and burger, but most gave up, failed miserably or did not even care to try! Bossteaks have recently done a pizza with 1kg of beef patties thrown on top. This is obviously a pizza and not a Pizza Burger! No cheating, please!

One other thing… Pizza Burger is too generic of a name, so we dubbed this as the “Hamrun Hamburger”! Why? Hamrun people are relaxed, easy going and fuss-free. They don’t need Lord Nelson or Tarragon to enjoy food. Any Gabbana or express food joint goes, as long as it’s fresh and tastes good. Let’s remember that Hamrun was also home of the unforgettable Porkies, the express food place that was open around the clock, and considered by many as the hangover cure after a drunk night out! The Hamrun burger scene lay dormant for years after Porkies closed shop. This year, there’s a new surge of burger joints with The Journey and Chick’n Bites trying to finetune their game and rise towards the top of the express burger scene.

We made our pizza burger from scratch in our kitchen. We used a sourdough base for the pizza made from Caputo 00 flour, whole wheat flour, salt and water. We just put a tomato sauce and some mozzarella on top. The patties were made from a mix of ground Chuck as it has the right percentage of fat and ground Sirloin for its beefy flavour. Both parties were topped with Jack cheese, with pepperoni wedged in the middle!

If you’re a true Hamruniz, and like to indulge in calorie bombs, we’re going to give you a quick Food Hack how to make the pizza burger in less than 10 minutes, without switching on any oven! LIDL have 5″ pizzas that are perfect for the job. They run their own bakery and have all kind of fresh savoury snacks and bread. Their squarish ciabatta bread is one of the best burger buns as it holds a good amount of patties and condiments, and has a tasty olive oil flavour. Get a double beef fillet burger from Chick King, feed the bread to the hungry pigeons, and wedge the patties between the pizzas. You can get salami cuts from Alfons. Done and done!