The Garbage Plate

Garbage plates are quite likely my favorite meal. If you aren't from western New York it's quite likely you don't know what I'm talking about, so let me tell you a little about them. They started at Nick Tahou Hots and have been wildly copied by many places in and around Rochester. To make a garbage plate you start with a base of two ingredients. Home fries and macaroni salad are most popular but I prefer to use french fries instead of home fries. You could also substitute in baked beans. Then you add your meat. I've always preferred cheeseburger patties, but you could also use red hots, white hots, chicken, fish, or a ridiculous number of other options. On top of that they add mustard, ketchup, onions, and some delicious meat sauce, served with a side of rolls or Italian toast.

If you just want to make a real basic plate they're pretty easy. Just need some mac salad, frozen french fries and some type of meat. I almost always go with cheeseburgers, but other choices are fine. This here is one of my first garbage plates and I didn't even bother making the sauce. The burgers are each a half pound patty and were very juicy, so that was delicious.

Personally, I like to put them in a bowl instead of on a plate. I think it's just easier to work with and won't go spilling over the size. Of course, that depends on exactly how large you make your Garbage Plate, since mine tend to be on the rather large size. I'm still experimenting with making a proper sauce, but a really lazy alternative I have tried is just mixing some jarred tomato sauce with some mustard and hot sauce and a bit of browned beef to make a quick and easy meat sauce. I think I threw in a bit of barbecue sauce in there as well. And, of course, you can always further deliciousize your Garbage Plate is to just add more stuff to it. Which is really my general rule of thumb while cooking. You can see that I've added a couple fried eggs and an awesome amount of bacon to the one on the right. Along with some 5 cheese garlic bread this made an incredibly delicious meal.