The burger: Granted, the "Moroccan" slider at Arcane Kitchen, a newish food truck that's just hit the mean streets of downtown Minneapolis, isn't technically a burger. But it bears two primary burger components — ground beef, and a bun — so I'm making allowances for this installment of Burger Friday. Plus, it's terrific.
Not that chef/co-owner Lucas Ballweber isn't fluent in Burgerese. "When we do a brick-and-mortar restaurant, we'll definitely have burgers on the menu," he said. Initially, the truck offered a beef patty slider. "But it was tough to execute," he said. "The ticket was seven to eight minutes — because you're cooking a raw patty — when everything else on the menu is a two- to three-minute item."
Enter the Sloppy Joe-style sandwich, one that stands apart by calling upon North African accents.
The meat is a 50-50 mix of ground lamb and beef. It was originally a 100 percent lamb formula. "But people weren't into the gaminess of it," said Ballweber. "So we cut it with an 80/20 blend of certified Angus beef. The gaminess isn't there, but the lamb flavor remains."
The finely ground meat mix is cooked, low and slow, to achieve maximum tenderness. The fat is drained off, and then the real fun begins: in goes fire-roasted tomatoes, a bit of red wine and a warming, deeply fragrant seasoning blend that calls upon paprika, turmeric, cardamom, clove, allspice, cinnamon and ginger. It's a "burger" that triggers the salivation process through the nose.
The toppings are spot-on. Raita, a mild cucumber-yogurt sauce ("It's like an Indian tzatziki sauce," said Ballweber) dispels any thoughts of dryness, and its cool temperature is a pleasant contrast to the piping-hot ground meat, Fried onions add a slight, welcome saltiness and plenty of quiet crunch.
As for the bun, it's a King's Hawaiian, those soft, fluffy, tea biscuit-size sliders that have more than a hint of sweetness. They're served in sets of three — the shape is more hoagie than slider — and they get the buttered/toasted treatment.
Ballweber serves the Moroccan with a fork, and with good reason; this is one cumbersome sandwich. Turns out, that fork is also a perfect-solution kind of implement. "I grew up in North Dakota, so I like hot dish, I like mushy food," he said. "So that's how I eat the Moroccan. I break it up with a fork, and eat it like hot dish."
