WHITE CASTLE SLIDERS

Ever since the last visit I made out to White Castle while at school, I’ve given it some thought about how to make those little greaseball sliders at home (with a little less grease, of course). It’s got all the components of an ordinary cheeseburger: ground beef, cheese, ketchup, mustard, bun, onions. However, it was always that natural onion flavor that came from the meat that eluded me. Recently, I read an article where someone used dry onion soup mix with ground beef to make meatloaf. That’s when the final ingredient dawned on me. After some planning out and adapting a previous recipe, it was time to make some White Castle.

White Castle Sliders
Makes 6 sliders

~ 1/2 lb. ground beef
~ 1 tbsp onion soup mix
~ 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
~ 1/4 tsp salt
~ 1/8 tsp pepper
~ 1/3 cup minced onions
~ 6 dinner rolls
~ Ketchup
~ Mustard
~ American cheese slices

Prep Work:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. While that’s warming up, go ahead and mince up your onions.
• Take your six dinner rolls and cut them in half.
• Mix your ground beef with your salt, pepper, onion soup mix, and Worcestershire sauce. Knead it a little bit to make sure all the ingredients spread themselves evenly through the meat.
• On a cookie sheet, use the top half of the rolls and place them together on the sheet to form a 6 x 2 “grid” to show you where to flatten out your meat.
• Once you get a good sense of the edges, take your ground beef mixture and start to flatten it out into a rectangle shape on the cookie sheet. Flatten it an additional inch past your boundary, because during the cooking process, the meat will shrink.

Oven / Stovetop:

• Throw the sheet of ground beef into the oven for ten minutes. While that is cooking, sauté your onions in a pan with some salt. Set those aside in a small bowl once they are done.
• Take the beef out of the oven when time’s up. Drain off the grease from the beef around the edges (I used a paper towel to soak it up).
• Spoon your sautéed onions on top of the sheet of meat and then lay down your slices of American cheese on top. Put it back into the oven for an additional five minutes.
• Microwave your rolls for about twenty seconds to warm them up before the beef is ready. Take the meat out of the oven when it’s done and then lay down the tops of the dinner rolls onto the meat, forming that rectangle pattern.
• Use a pizza cutter / knife to cut the meat right down the creases of the rolls until you get the six individual portions.

Plating:

• On your serving plate, arrange out the six bottom halves of the dinner rolls. Put a small dab of ketchup and mustard on each roll before transferring the meat / top half over from the cookie sheet.
• Once everything is transferred, arrange your sliders into presentation order.

The sliders that I made tonight had the addition of a slice of dill pickle on each one, but I decided to take that out, since I think the sharpness of its flavor detracts from the flavor of the meat. Aside from that, everything about the taste was pretty darn close. The first bite took me back to when we ate them out of the Crave Case box and remembering probably how much grease was consumed that day. Thankfully, these sliders probably don’t contain as much grease as the real thing does, so you can feel a little less guilty about eating a few more.

Categories: Recipes

Tagged as: cheeseburgers, recipes, sliders, white castle