The Vegan Big Baby. Perhaps you’ve eaten at the Nicky’s on Cicero. Or the one on Archer. Or Western. Or 47th. Or Kedzie. Or maybe the other one on Western. The Big Baby is a double cheeseburger that orbits Midway airport, the sum greater than its parts, built to combat the Big Mac. No lettuce, no tomato. From the ground up, a toasted sesame bun, mustard, ketchup, pickle, patty, cheese, patty, grilled onions, sesame bun #2.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and tell me which Nicky’s you frequented.

The Vegan Big Baby. Not the real McCoy, but still.

IMG_8678 2.jpg — THE VEGAN BIG BABY

prep time: 5 minutes
cook time: 15 seconds

You can’t change the order of the ingredients, have some respect.

This recipe requires you to toast some buns, grill some onions and cook up two patties with cheese in between. I would have went full Blackstone but it was raining so cast iron will suffice.

What you’ll need:

sesame seed buns
yellow mustard
red ketchup
plant based burger patties
vegan american cheese
white onions
hamburger style dill pickles
vegetable oil
salt
pepper
garlic powder
smoked paprika

First order of business will be starting those onions. Chop them up, get out the cast iron and throw some oil in there. Bring it up to medium heat and add your onions and a generous amount of salt.

I chopped them up further as they continued to cook.

Cook out the onions for a few, checking to make sure nothing is burning. Add a pinch of garlic powder and stir that up. Actually you know what, add another pinch of garlic powder. You don’t want to necessarily caramelize the onions but they should have a nice browned, translucent aura to them once complete.

Now crack open your burger patties and some parchment paper. Flatten them some if necessary. You want a thin patty, not quite a smash but also not a big ol’ pub style burger. Add salt, pepper, smoked paprika and garlic powder to each patty.

I didn’t season these until after the photo, leave me alone.

If your cast iron still has a bunch of onion bits in it, wipe em out with a paper towel and throw a splash of fresh oil in there. Bring the temp up much higher than you had it for the onions. Also maybe open a window and pop the batteries out of the smoke detector for a few minutes.

Once your pan is hot hot, toss a patty in there and flatten it further with parchment paper and a spatula. Have your cheese ready.

Throw some seasoning on the exposed side of the patty if you didn’t earlier. Let that cook for a few minutes, checking for browning along the edges. Once maillard-ed, slide that spatula underneath real quick to as not compromise the crust. Give it a flip, and stick a slice of cheese up top. Add a teeny tiny splash of water into the pan and cover immediately to steam that patty out and melt the cheese down.

Pull the lid off and give the burger a second to catch up to the cheese. Once that patty is good to go, get it out of the pan and throw a second patty in. Of course you could do both at once if you have a massive pan…or access to a flat top.

Patty #2 won’t require you to add cheese so once that one is good on both sides, rip it out of there and stack it on your cheese-topped patty off to the side.

It’s like one of those double down things.

Now bring the temp down on your pan and give it a wipe if necessary. Put the batteries back in your smoke detector and get out your sesame seed buns. Stick them in the pan and give them a proper toasting, should take about a minute or two.

So this is actually where my smoke detector went off.

Once your buns are toasted, respect the integrity of the Big Baby by assembling it as follows.

Bun, mustard, ketchup, pickles…

…patty, cheese, patty, grilled onions…

…bun.

No mayo, no lettuce, no tomato, none of that.

Now you’ve got yourself a vegan Big Baby. If you whip up one of these, throw it on instagram and tag me @draggedthroughthegarden and I will tell you how proud I am of you. I don’t run ads on here so these look good on your phone screen so consider sharing DTTG with a friend. Your word of mouth is my most important avenue, I appreciate you following along.