I recently read this article from Serious Eats on cloning In-n-Out's Double Double. Although I can get an In-n-Out burger almost any time I want, I was inspired to clone one at home. Initially, I only wanted to clone the magical grilled onions, but that eventually led to the whole burger. This is not a strict recipe as I didn't follow a recipe. This is just a rough run through of what I did based on what I remembered from the article. You can read the article for an in depth analysis of the burger.

The first step would be the grilled onions that you get with an animal style burger. I used the method that Kenji used, constantly deglazing the pan with water and cooking the onions for a long period of time. I chopped 6 whole onions...

...with the help of my newest toy, a Kyocera ceramic santoku knife. This guy is super sharp, light, and easy to work with. I absolutely love it.

After the tears and chopping, I began the cooking process. I started with a little bit of oil and a ton of onions.

[slideshow]

Here's a slideshow. Check out the different stages of cooking the onions. After 3 hours of cooking, the onions ended up looking like this...

They turned into an absolutely delicious onion marmalade. After the 3 hour cooking process, I moved onto the rest of the burger. I made sure to cook the patties with mustard, just like they do at In-n-Out with animal style burgers.

After searing the first side of the patties, I generously covered the top with yellow mustard, flipped, put some American cheese and that sweet onion compote on top.

I then put the patties on some nicely toasted buns with some homemade Spread and homegrown tomato and lettuce. I didn't have any pickles on hand, but the burger was still delicious without them. The burger was different from what In-n-Out has to offer, but (dare I say) my sister and I both agreed that this version was better. Before you all smite me and send me flame mail, I repeat that they were different, I just prefer the home-brewed version. Now, with all this left over onion compote, I can ~~take over the world~~ use it on anything. It's a 3 hour process, but definitely worth it. A grilled cheese sandwich with this stuff would be absolutely divine...