4 Levels of Hamburgers: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

I'm Emily and I'm a level one chef I'm Lorenzo and I'm a level two chef I'm Frank and I've been a professional chef for 23 years I last made this hamburger recipe probably about two weeks ago I actually just made this super a couple days ago this is the burger I make for my family and friends the people that are most important to me when I make burgers I just use store-bought ground beef here we go this is grass-fed ground chuck it's about 80 lean meat and 20 fat the fat is your golden ticket to a good burger for my hamburgers I like to use beef short ribs it's got a great amount of lean meat to fat the only problem with it is this tough so we have to do is grind it I like to run my own meat because when you go to the supermarket basically they're just getting whatever beef scraps they have this way I get a burger that I know exactly what's in it now I'm just gonna put some bread crumbs in it holds it together I think a little better next step some Worcestershire sauce garlic powder salt chilli flakes because my husband likes everything spicy now that may be just ground up I'm gonna form it into patties you really just shouldn't handle the meat too long I disagree with that glitch I like to work it a little so the burger stays together holds its shape what I usually do is I work it until it'll kind of stick to my hand I'm just gonna kind of like roll these up and then flatten them like hockey pucks then I do the old divot little dimple in the middle I work it into a volcano shape what this is gonna happen is is that when the meat curses can expand a little this is actually gonna disappear even out make a nice flat burger now we're ready to cut some burgers I cook the burgers in a cast-iron pan cast-iron pan holds a lot of key I'm using a nonstick fry pan skillet griddle flat iron what I'm doing is cooking bacon why I'm having a bacon cheeseburger so when I cook these I don't really need that much pink inside just a little bit of pink that ground meat doesn't really have a great texture when you cook it rare I like it medium rare i season my burgers with salt salt it right before it get cooking what happens when you season ahead salt draws out the moisture you a moist burger when I season I seasoned liberally it's gonna help that cross form I have a little beef fat so I'm gonna take a little bit of fat and just coat the bottom of my pan I'll also use the delicious rendered fat from the bacon to cook my burger I'm gonna take these off you sit over there the reason I use beef fat and not something like butter with a pan this hot I'm gonna put my butter in the pan and immediately the butter is gonna burn I think it's now I have my patty have my volcano in the middle I'm gonna put the flat side first I'm gonna give it about 4 minutes on each side when I see the lower portion of that burger get dark crispy Brown flip over I'm gonna go as high as I possibly can to start that browning and the crust on the box people tend to start moving things around leave the bird alone I'm just pressing down on it to make sure that all the meat touches of the pan at least a little bit do not press the juices out of this delicious burger please I want a little bit of onion flavor on my birthday I take a nice slice of onion I'm gonna put it on top so I can see that it's nice and crispy so I'm gonna do the old flip oh [Laughter] my burgers brown on this side I'm gonna give it a flip so you can see I have a beautiful crust this looks disgusting oh no that's worse there's a nice crisp outer layer that's been formed its sealing the juices in this burger and I'm waiting about three minutes so now my onion on the other side is getting caramelized carmelization is when the sugars start to go Brown the way that I'm going to test this burger for doneness is I'm actually gonna poke at it right if I poke at it now it's still really soft I want it to be fairly firm I'm gonna go ahead and put the cheese on this side cuz at least a little less charge this is American cheese so today I'm using sliced cheddar cheese basically this is when you get your camera out you start taking pictures of your this burger I'm gonna use some mustard cheese now Monster has a lot of the same melting qualities as American cheese but it also has a little bit more flavor my burger is being hugged by my cheese pickle so let's set this delicious burger oh my lord have mercy so now my cheese has melted it's not melted totally but it's gonna continue to cook as I take it out of the pan I'm gonna take this off and just check the doneness real quick if one were to eat this it would be a little raw in the middle that burger was burnt on the outside and raw on the inside so we're gonna go again I'm turning this on much less hot than before butter burger yeah that's a cook burger and now we're gonna get abundance and toppings and finish this burger i have that kaiser roll today i'm gonna butter it a little bit I'm actually just toasting this in the griddle so I have just a normal white grocery store button hamburger bun I like a potato roll the bun doesn't need any extra fat the burger has enough for it toasted plain now we've got some nicely toasted kaiser roll delicious now we're gonna work on our toppings for the burger first off I have some ketchup I just like a little bit of moisture underneath the burger put a little mayo hello all right so we have mustard on the top I usually do three dill pickle slices fantastic as a chef I like to make my own pickles I have a fancy french mandolin but this gives the pickles a nice crinkle cut we just want to make enough to fill up our jar some sprigs of dill I'm just gonna stuff them into the bottom of the jar I have a little bit of garlic and a couple of cloves and then my spices coriander seed black peppercorns mustard seed some little Thai bird chilies and then I proceeded to stuff my cucumbers in and now I'm gonna take the brine that I made I get a ladle and I just fill it with a ladle and then you're gonna put my lid on it goes right in the fridge I leave it in the fridge for about a week I have my burger patty I'm gonna put it on my bun I have the pickles that I made the lettuce that's a nice slice of lettuce right there tomatoes I only like a few pieces of raw onion I kind of like a lot of it oh boy my bacon some ketchup not a ton I just want enough so that it adds a little sweetness to my burger I'm just gonna press it all together BAM boom beautiful it looks good it smells fantastic what I like most about this burger is it's not complicated [Music] and now for the best part I get to eat it it's just delicious we have three different chefs and three very different cheeseburgers from the bun the beef and the toppings but let's talk about the ground beef first Emily our first chef use ground hamburger ground hamburger doesn't tell you a whole lot about the beef that you're using so this is just the beef that was at the grocery store ground hamburger comes from any skeletal muscular tissue you won't know specifically where that meat is coming from Lorenzo used ground chuck grass-fed ground chuck the ground chuck comes from a really particular part of the animal it's near the shoulder area ground chuck is 80% lean and 20% fat it's gonna make for a nice juicy and flavorful hamburger it's like summertime and abundant Frank ground his own meat from the short rib and it also has quite a bit of fat in it so if it gets stuck you just push it through a little when you grind your own meat you have more control over it as well you can see exactly how much fat is going into your hamburger it has a beautiful amount of flooring and you can make sure that you're controlling the protein to lipid ratio I get a burger that I know exactly what's in it handling and shaping of your ground beef makes a difference to emily added a lot of spices to her ground hamburger she also added breadcrumbs the spices are there to add a lot of different flavors the breadcrumbs are gonna alter the texture a little bit I don't know if that's right but that's what I do I would call that more of a meatball than a hamburger we're not making meatballs lorenzo believed as many people do that you shouldn't overwork your patty everyone has a body temperature and that heat from your body melts the fat you can't overwork your meat but it's a little bit hard to do by hand when you're making a hamburger oh okay Lorenzo made an indentation in his Patty and Frank made a little volcano he changed the shape completely I want there to be a divot in the center this is gonna modulate the water loss that happens when you start to add heat to your patty you start to have some steam inside and that will raise or give it a little bit of a puff to the patty especially when you cook it at a very high temperature Frank and Lorenzo both salted their Patty prior to cooking you don't want to salt your ground beef when you're mixing it no you're absolutely right salt and change the structure of the proteins and add some tough quality to your burger it's important to do it just prior to putting the hamburger patty on the grill salt it right before you cook it Emily used butter to cook her hamburger patty this gives some really nice flavors no who doesn't like butter but it also has a really low smoke point I think as you add the butter and turn up the heat you're gonna burn the butter and you're gonna get these off P resines and other types of compounds that are gonna give a burnt and bitter kind of taste Lorenzo used rendered pork fat nice little fat rendering from here which we will use and this has a really nice rich quality and a new flavor profile to your beef yo Frank used rendered beef fat which is a lot of really nice long chain fatty acids like stearic acid it doesn't hurt to cook beef in beef fat it makes it taste better when you heat the stearic acid it's going to melt and you baste the burger in that fat it's going to just riad that delicious unique stearic acid quality that you get only from ground beef Emily used a nonstick frying pan she really didn't need to there's enough fat in the hamburger patty it will be very easy to release from the pan I've had a lot of things stick to pans over these Lorenza used a griddle so he had a lot of contact with the hamburger patties it actually looks really good you're going to want conduction to happen that can only happen when the patty has maximum contact with the heat source Frank used a shallow cast-iron skillet just repaired holds a lot of heat so he not only had the conduction from the bottom of the cast iron skillet making contact with his patty but he also had the advantage of the heat being retained because there were sides to that skillet so he had a nice heat flow around his burger when you cook ground beef the proteins that are present are going to coagulate and they're gonna squeeze a lot of the natural water that's present in the beet out of the protein matrix when you have 20% lipid content you won't lose the fat and it'll make for a really nice juicy cheeseburger you generally want a nice high heat to get a good sear on your meat and that's going to impart some really nice roasted Karim Allah or the oniony flavors and that's from Bayard browning Manor Browning is a non enzymatic browning reaction that happens between proteins and reducing sugars you'll know your hamburger is done in a couple different ways Emily cut hers open if one were to eat this and it would be a little raw in the middle you generally want to avoid doing that you're gonna have a lot of the juices and the fat run out of that hamburger before you even get to enjoy it lorenzo timed his meat this is okay if you have a really consistent product but if you change the different meats that you use when you're making your hamburger patty that can be variable to it'll move waiting about three minutes three minutes on each side at a really high temperature for a relatively thin patty should do the trick we also had Frank who knows how to look and touch a hamburger and tell whether it's done or not but burger start to firm up this is something that comes only from experience okay we're good to go with this Emily used American cheese you're always gonna know that American cheese melts really well but it doesn't have a whole lot of taste I like American cheese for its cheese the wrens are used to cheddar cheese to make it look the old-fashioned cheeseburger when you'd always see it ballpark cheddar cheese is going to give you a nice flavor profile you're gonna have a nice rich quality and a little bit of Tang to that type of cheese Frank used Munster Munster also melts really well and it gives you some really nice flavor profiles it's the most complex out of the three cheese's that our chef's used when you choose a cheese for your hamburger you want to make sure that you consider water content if you have a softer cheese it's gonna melt very easily cheeses that are a little bit harder are not gonna melt very well because there's just not enough moisture when choosing your bun you have options Emily used a standard white bun that you pick up in the grocery store it was pretty much one-dimensional Lorenzo used a kaiser roll delicious kaiser roll we have a little bit of texture on the outside of the kaiser roll he also toasted his bun and used butter butter is a really nice flavor that compliments some of the toasted chemicals and compounds that happen when you toast your bread Frank just toasted his roll it was a potato roll so it had a nice rich quality to it he did not put any kind of additional fat with his roll because there's plenty of fat in his ground short ribs when it comes to toppings you have a few things to consider texture I'm gonna do a little bit of raw onion color fresh tomatoes and taste the pickles are gonna add a contrast to your burger it's talking to me ha ha ha the next time you make a cheeseburger I hope you can take some of these elements and incorporate them into your own recipe

Channel: Epicurious

Views: 18,786,496

Rating: 4.7655053 out of 5

Keywords: 4 levels, 4 levels of hamburger, 4 levels of, epicurious, hamburger, hamburgers, hamburger recipe, best hamburger, best hamburgers, easy hamburgers, how to make hamburger, make hamburger, making hamburgers, 4 levels hamburger, amateur chef, food scientist, hamburger 4 levels, 4 levels epicurious, professional chef, homemade hamburger, hamburger epicurious, professional hamburgers, amateur hamburgers, cheeseburger

Id: ERUugjLmwuY

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/PumpkinSkeet]

That lady with the pointer is super annoying

[u/[deleted]]

Lol they actually brought in someone who never made a burger

She put breadcrumbs in the burger? She couldn’t cook it all the way through?

[u/SageKnows]

that chick had NO idea what she was doing

[u/Avitas1027]

If anyone's interested, there's a burger festival that's about to start in Prince Edward Island, Canada.

Burger Love

I moved away last year and have been extremely depressed since they released the burgers this morning. I miss living there in April so much.

[u/anonymous_coward69]

Love these videos.