the garbage plate
I know this isn't the most reassuring name, but stick with me here. The garbage plate is the pinnacle of Greek-American junk gastronomy.
For those who aren't fixated on regional junk foods, a lot of America's wildest and most overdone regional fast foods were invented by Greek or Macedonian-Bulgarian immigrants. It's kind of a thing, for whatever reason.
It's a plate of fried potatoes (traditionally home fries, but french fries are cool, too), pasta salad, and either cheeseburgers or hot dogs (with melted cheese). This is already way too much, but then you ladle a Greek-American-seasoned meat sauce on top and finish it off with minced onions and zigzags of ketchup and mustard. The garbage plate is absolutely fucked. I don't know if I could eat one sober.
"Why is it called the garbage plate?"
Back in 1918, a Greek-American guy named Alex Tahou opened a slop shop called Nick Tahou's Hots in Rochester. (In Rochester, they call hot dogs "hots." It's, like, a thing, I guess). They had this super overdone plate that was basically everything I wrote in the first paragraph, plus baked beans. In the 1980s, college kids started coming in and asking for "the plate with all the garbage on it." The name stuck, and the garbage plate became a local icon.
So anyways, I've never been to Rochester, or the Finger Lakes, or upstate New York. I really wanted to make a garbage plate, though, so I did a lot of research and came up with this composite recipe. I don't know if it tastes like the Nick Tahou one. I just know it's good.
Five things I know about Rochester off the top of my head right now:
- garbage plate
- Finger Lakes
- Kodak
- uh...
- uhhh...
the rochester hot sauce
WHAT YOU NEED
- 250g ground beef
- 150g minced yellow onion
- 2 cloves finely minced garlic
- 1 tbsp condensed tomato paste
- 1/2 tbsp brown sugar
- 1/2 tsp chile california powder (sub: 1/4 tsp paprika + 1/4 tsp cayenne powder)
- 1/4 tsp cayenne powder
- 1/4 tsp ground cumin
- 1/4 tsp ground allspice
- 1/4 tsp granulated garlic or garlic powder
- 1/8 tsp cinnamon powder
- 1/8 tsp ground cloves
- salt, black pepper, and msg to taste
- 125ml water
- 1/2 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp neutral oil
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HOW-TO
- Heat a pan over medium and add the butter and oil. If you're using a non-stick, put the fats in first.
- Toss in the onions and fry until they start to brown, then push them to the side.
- Add the beef. Let it brown as nicely as you can. The maillard reaction is your friend here. When it's nicely browned, break it up into tiny pieces with a wooden spoon.
- Mix in the garlic and let fry until aromatic, then mix in the sugar and all of the spices. Season to taste with the salt, pepper, and msg.
- Pour in the water and bring it to a simmer. Let it cook over medium-low heat until the liquid has reduced into a sauce. Continuously break up the meat chunks as it goes. You want the beef pieces to be the size of large ants.
- Adjust seasoning. The sauce is done. You can store it in a jar in the fridge for later, or use it immediately.
The Garbage Plate
WHAT YOU NEED
- fried potatos (french fries or home fries)
- pasta salad
- your choice of meat (a cheeseburger patty, or a butterflied hotdog with cheese)
- 1/2 batch of Rochester hot sauce
- zig-zags of ketchup and mustard
- minced raw yellow onions
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HOW-TO
- Put the fried potatoes and pasta salad on opposite sides of the same plate or bowl.
- Fry up your cheeseburger patty or butterflied hotdogs in a pan with a little oil. Set whichever one you chose on top of everything else, in the middle of the plate.
- Top everything with the Rochester hot sauce, then the ketchup, mustard, and onions.
- Mix it all up and shovel it into your craw.
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TIPS AND TRICKS
- The most authentic cheese to use on your garbage plate is white American cheese. I guess they like white American more than yellow up in the northeast. I don't know. It tastes pretty similar to me, but it did look really good with the white.