It’s halftime.  The music sucks.   You need hot food for the second half.  Time to make the sliders!

But, you have to be prepared and move fast.  You only have 30 minutes and the clock is ticking…

The Plan

• Pregame – make all of the patties, cut all of the cheese squares, put mayo on the buns.  Each patty ought to be ~1/8th of a lb, so scale your meat buying accordingly
• End of first quarter – take out your griddle and put it on the stovetop, remove the cheese from the fridge, put out your serving platter near your cook station
• Commercial Break in middle of second quarter – Enlist someone to help you
• Two minute warning – excuse yourself and heat the griddle on medium high heat, go back and watch the end of the half
• Halftime – Mayo up your buns and then Cook!
• Start of third quarter – kick that annoying guy off the couch who doesn’t know a first down from a hole in the ground and eat

Ingredients

• n lbs of ground beef (i like 22% fat, you must get at least 18% or don’t bother)
• spice mix – 2 parts salt, 1 part pepper 1 part garlic powder, 1 part onion powder, 1 part mustard powder  where 1 part = 1/2 tsp per pound of meat
• cheddar cheese squares (like you get for a sandwich, square shape is important)
• slider rolls (8 per lb of beef) – i like kings hawaiian or martins, whatever brand they must be potato flour based
• mayo

Directions – Before the game starts

1. With a ruler, measure the size of your rolls from the outside
2. Get a sheet pan and some parchment paper, put parchment paper on the bottom of the pan
3. Take your ground beef and with a rolling pin roll it out into a thin layer (1/8 – 1/4 inch thick)
4. Trim your beef so you have a rectangle, reserve the trims (you will repeat this to make more burgers)
5. Sprinkle the spice mixture over the top of the rectangle, don’t be shy with it
6. Fold the rectangle in half
7. Roll it with the rolling pin to merge the two halves and to get it to about 1/4 inch again
8. Trim and reserve
9. Get your ruler back out and measure the beef to make patties that fit the size of the buns
10. Cut the patties and put on the parchment paper in a single layer, when you run out of room add another layer of paper (for another layer of burgers!)
11. repeat till you’ve used all the meat.
12. Wrap the sheet pan with plastic wrap and stash in the fridge until halftime
13. Next, cut the cheese to size – if you are lucky you can just cut the squares into quarters and be done, if you are unlucky you may need to measure.  Stash in the fridge
14. Take another sheet pan out and open up all of the buns so you have rows of tops then a row of bottoms.  Plastic wrap this and stash on the counter (not in the fridge)

Directions – Halftime

1. Get your helper to put a thin layer of mayo on each side of the buns, make sure this is orderly (so you can put them back together correctly without some poor slider getting two tops or two bottoms.)  Have this person standing by
2. Take your burgers out of the fridge
3. Hand your helper the cheese
4. Start a kitchen timer
5. Place the burgers on the griddle in rows starting one (plus a bit) burger width from the back, till your griddle is full
6. Press down on each slider with the back of your spatchula
7. Cook for each burger 90 seconds (from the time it hits the grill to now, not from the time you pressed it down)
8. Now you need to start flipping – you have space to flip them backwards towards the rear of the grill starting in the back – you need to flip, press down, flip, press down
9. After you have flipped and pressed a burger, your helper should apply cheese on top
10. Once you are done and each burger has cooked 90 seconds on the second side (3 minutes total)
11. Now you need to put them onto the buns, Enlist your helper to do this.  Helper gets bun, you put burger on bun, helper puts bun on platter.
12. Make a pile
13. Repeat till all the meat is used.
14. Serve, you are now a true super bowl hero.