LOS ANGELES _ "It's so secret. So many secret things in there. I'll never tell you."
This is Jazz Singsanong's standard response when people ask what she puts in the off-menu Jazz burger at her Thai restaurant, Jitlada. The spicy patty served on leaves of crisp iceberg lettuce in lieu of a bun is sort of like the protein- or animal-style burger at In-N-Out: It's technically secret, but if you know about it, you order it.
Most of us have the late Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold to thank for discovering Singsanong's weaponized meat patties. The ground beef is studded with a minefield of fresh and dried hot chiles that sneak up and attack with every other bite. It's seasoned with lots of palm sugar, but to balance all that sweetness there's a deep umami funk. It could be courtesy of fish sauce and/or soy sauce, but again, Singsanong will never tell.
Singsanong created the burger for her kids' school lunches years ago in an attempt to give them something that skewed more American. It's now a favorite at Jitlada, where you can get one if and only if Singsanong is there _ and if she feels like making it.
It's one of those great L.A. restaurant dishes that I often crave at 2 in the morning, when there's no conceivable way of getting one. The last time I wanted a Jazz burger, I decided to experiment and make it myself. I ended up testing six iterations of the recipe and going through about 12 pounds of meat.
Once I thought I had nailed it, I headed to Jitlada to make my Jazz burger alongside Singsanong.
On a recent afternoon, we crammed into her tiny Thai Town kitchen, chopped chiles and garlic perfuming and thickening the air, causing my eyes to water and prompting more than one coughing fit. Singsanong, unfazed by the chile clouds around us, darted in and out of her pantry, sloshing a couple of glugs of one sauce into the meat, then adding another. She mixed her patties in that same pantry so I couldn't see what was going on.
Singsanong whipped her ground beef with other ingredients to create a sort of meat paste, resulting in a patty that was a lot wetter and looser than mine, kind of like a sloppy Joe. When she put it on the grill, she poked at it and moved it around constantly, reforming the patty with her spatula. My burger looked more traditional (the patty held together), and I left it alone on the grill.
I presented the burger to Singsanong and, after a big bite, she noted that it tasted beefier than her version, with a nice punchy flavor.
"Not the Jazz burger, but I love it," she said. "I'm proud of you."
I'll take it.
Welcome to a new occasional cooking series called I Can Make That. Full disclosure: I have no formal cooking training of any kind. But I often challenge myself to re-create the stuff I love to eat at restaurants, so my wise editors thought it would make for a good column.
Check out my rendition.
