I'd been holding off on posting this recipe until I made these burgers again and could use a picture in the post but I took ten pictures and they all pretty much turned out badly. My biggest problem with shots of food (because I have a consumer-level camera and am not an especially great photographer) is that the flash is so strong that it blows out all the detail rather easily.
With a burger which is relatively pale in color anyway because it is made with chicken, this can look like quite the wash-out. The picture above was the best of the shots and I had to try and burn in some details using Photoshop's adjustment features and tools (which is why the cheese looks an odd color) and it still didn't work very well. Photoshop is great but it can't bring out detail which isn't already there.
Anyway, try not to let the picture dissuade you from trying this recipe. If you like burgers with dill pickles and mustard, you will probably like this. As always, you should consider adjusting the spices to suit your preferences.
Mustard-Dill Burgers:- 1 kg. or approximately 2 lbs. ground meat
- 1 tbsp. yellow or brown mustard
- 2 tbsp. sour cream
- 1 tbsp. garlic powder
- 1/2 tbsp. onion powder
- 2 tsp. dried dill
- 1/2 tsp. pepper
- 1 tsp. salt
- olive oil (small amount for frying) or cooking spray
Place the ground meat in a large bowl and add all the other ingredients. Use a large spoon to work everything together as evenly as possible. Working in the sour cream will be difficult though so you may want to put on food-handling gloves and mix it with your hands or you can soften the sour cream a bit in the microwave to aid in the mixing. I recommend gloves because the mustard may stain your hands and will definitely get under your nails. Shape the burgers into patties (I make 6 but it depends on the size of the burgers you prefer). Wrap each patty in plastic wrap and allow it to sit in the refrigerator. This will help them hold their shape better while cooking as well as allow the spices to work their way in. Fry the burgers, covered, in a large lightly-greased skillet until fully-cooked. Serve with cheese and mayonnaise if desired.
2 comments:
Even with a consumer-level camera, there should be a function-menu option for dimming the flash. But if there's not, just step back some and zoom in. The old inverse-square law will decrease the flash intensity for ya.
I've tried this but food pictures are trickier than most because you want to get in tighter for detail. If you draw back enough to mitigate the flash issue, you don't get a close enough shot of the food.
The only thing that usually does work is covering the flash with a folded tissue (that's how I got the shot of my wedding ring without blowing out all the detail). However, with food getting cold (that was my dinner, after all) and the picture not being so important, I wasn't going to take the time to play around so much with the flash.
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