Basic thick burgers, grill or pan

this burger recipe is sponsored by squarespace your basic big thick juicy burger nice and flat not all bunched up in the middle i've been boning up on burgers lately and i'm going to show you what i've learned we'll do some outside on the grill and some others inside in a pan i think thick burgers require totally different technique from thin burgers and different ingredients for a thick boy i want freshly ground loosely packed beef the stuff butchers generally grind in-house and comes out looking like worms this stuff works far better for a thick burger than ground beef that has been vacuum packed in a tight little brick this is chuck the classic burger cut you can get way more creative with your cuts but make sure whatever you're using is at least 20 fat a thick burger is going to be anywhere between five and eight ounces 140 to 230 grams raw weight i'm at the top end of that spectrum here and the key is don't try to mix seasoning into the interior of the meat do not knead the meat don't squish it really hard just gently pat it into a patty that's a little wider than how you want it in the end because it's going to shrink as it cooks i like to rotate it around and use my thumb to form a nice clean edge when you pack ground beef really tightly or knead it really aggressively you make the cooked texture really dense and rubbery and that effect is exacerbated if you work salt into the meat there's chemical things that happen protein bonds formed in response to the salt and also just the kneading and the smooshing keep the internal texture as loose as possible for a thick burger the only reason you can get away with kneading and salting meatballs and meatloaf is because there you're working in breadcrumbs and vegetables and other things that disrupt the protein matrix that's great but it's not a burger that's a burger and it'll cook even better if i depress the middle try to work the patty into like a lens shape or i guess it's an inverted lens i want the outer ring of meat to be thicker to slow its cooking the rim has more surface area so it gets more heat and is therefore liable to cook faster than the rest of the burger when that happens the rim of meat constricts and smooshes the center of the burger causing the center to bunch up in the middle then you have an elliptical burger that does not lie flat on the bun make that outer lip thick and you slow it's cooking since we can't season the interior we have to season the exterior really aggressively especially for thick boys like these you might not want that much salt but i do and i want lots of pepper remember there's a lot of meat here and then the burger seasoning that i swear by is garlic powder i'm a fan of this stuff generally but particularly on burgers the meat will keep the granules kind of wet enough that most of them shouldn't burn i've had my grill preheating and burning off the sludge from my last grilling for a thick burger i want moderate heat on my gas grill that means maximum heat gas grills are generally pretty weak compared to a charcoal grill for charcoal build a moderately hot fire if you don't know how to do that you just need to practice every grill is different for the grill i don't like to use any oil on the meat or on the grill grates it just drips down and causes flare-ups and on a thick burger i think oil can make the exterior go too dark brown before the inside is cooked don't push the patty into the grill grates at all that'll make it far more likely to stick when it's time to flip just gently plop it on and don't touch it i'll season the other side now i'm a fan of constant flipping when it comes to steak but with burgers you just can't you have to let the first side totally solidify as hard as possible before you flip if you don't the burger could fall apart all the good crust could stick to the bar is no good and i like to leave the lid open while the first side cooks that lets me cook the bottoms as firm as possible without overcooking the interior when you close the lid you trap ambient heat and turn the grill into an oven it cooks from all directions i just want to cook from the bottom at first a nice spirited sizzle there but nothing too crazy if the grill was too hot there'd be a bunch of smoke at this stage you'd smell burning if i was cooking this over charcoal i'd pile my coals unevenly so i could move the burger from hot zone to cool zone if necessary or vice versa i can feel that's not ready to flip yet it's gonna stick i've got some time to go inside and think about toppings it's vidalia onion season and my old friends at a m farms in georgia sent me a box hashtag not an ad just a fan vidalia's are extremely low in pungent sulfur compounds so they're great to eat raw on things like burgers and i've got some lettuce and some pickles that's enough all right these have been on the grill for seven minutes and really no matter what you do you'll need to scrape the burger a little bit to get it off the bars get every surface released before you flip or it's going to break apart especially because we didn't over pack the meat that loose internal texture is going to make the burger much more delicious to eat but right now it makes it more delicate to handle get every bit scraped clean off the bars before you flip at this point we're likely to have flare-ups because lots of fat is rendering out now and dripping down and catching fire a little flame char on meat goes a very long way i don't want this to taste burned nor do i want cancer which is a thing with burned meat so i will close the lid mostly to deprive those flames of some oxygen there's still flaming in there but probably not as bad i like to cook burgers most of the way on side one to get them firm enough to flip safely side two needs half as much time if you see a little juice pushing to the surface that means the inside is going to be about medium if you see a lot of juice flooding the surface like that that means the burger is going to be cooked all the way through by the time it rests which is how i want it i am not a fan of pink burgers and there's some health risk there too real quick i gotta melt my cheese reconstituted american cheese really was made for burgers because it melts so easily but i'm actually just using normal cheddar slices today they're gonna melt just fine if i close the lid and turn the grill into an oven to trap the ambient heat give it a minute and then have a look i'd like a little meltier tick tock tick tock tick tock ding that was seven minutes on side a four or five minutes on side b including the cheese melting time for a thick burger that's cooked all the way through and for a thick burger i like to let it rest on a plate for a couple of minutes it's gonna push out some juice at this stage and i'd rather that juice go out onto the plate instead of into the bun i hate soggy buns fancy burger joints these days often make their burgers too juicy for my taste they're a mess to eat speaking of buns i'll turn off my grill just to toast my buns a little in the residual heat if you want you can butter the cut sides and you'll get an even nicer effect than i do here i'll close the lid and let the buns steam through and get hot after a minute that's enough for me i don't want the bread to taste burned i mostly just want it to dry out so it can absorb some moisture without getting soggy people often like to put mayonnaise on the bottom bun to serve as a moisture barrier water doesn't mix with fat but i don't especially like mayonnaise so i prefer to use a single solid piece of lettuce as waterproofing for the bottom bun get my sweet vidalias on there straight from lions georgia and a burger to me is mostly just a dill pickle delivery device mustard and ketchup if you put your condiments under the meat they actually hit your tongue before your tongue hits the meat and it all comes together better in your mouth imho and there we go perfectly flat a little wider than the bun which is generally how i like it i don't like bread heavy bites and even though it's cooked well done that burger just crumbles in the mouth because we bought loose packed beef and we didn't overwork it or season the interior if you want a pink burger pull it when you just start to see juice surfacing and put the cheese on like right after you flip you won't have much time to melt it alright a good thing for doing burgers inside is a big cast iron pan but you can do a thick burger in any pan thick burgers are just generally easier to do at home in part because you don't have to crank the heat as high as you do for thin burgers i think that's a little too hot medium heat for thick boys and these i will grease up you don't have to worry about flame-ups inside and some oil will get you a nicer crust that'll compensate for the lack of smoky grill flavor and it'll guard against sticking which is a bigger hazard on a pan that makes full contact with the meat same seasonings as before salt pepper and my beloved garlic powder slap it in there and we should hear a spirited sizzle but nothing too crazy give the center a little push to make sure you don't have a steam balloon pushing the middle up and away from the pan plenty of fat is going to render out for cooking side b so i have no idea why i put more oil on there i just wasn't thinking it's totally unnecessary but more seasoning is definitely necessary after five minutes i can feel that a this is not ready to be flipped and b that spatula is going to be too soft to scrape that off the surface honestly i would do these in my non-stick if my non-stick was wide enough even in this huge cast iron i can only do two patties at a time thank goodness they're each thick enough to feed one person each there's a reason that thin patty burger joints especially favor a wide flat top grill you just need more horizontal space these look more than halfway cooked through it's been seven minutes it's now or never a little scraping with something rigid and cheese free ready to be flipped and look at all that gorgeous crusty browning boy yeah you can see i had plenty of fat in here to fry side b no point in adding more at this point the flipping has introduced so much water into the pan that i can tell the temperature is dipping i gotta boost my burner a little and it takes a little longer to melt cheese in a pan so i'm going to put my cheese on right away this is smoked gouda from the deli counter it really compensates for the lack of smoky grill flavor in the meat it just doesn't melt as readily as you'll see if you have a tight fitting lid go for it but i have to make do with a foil tent gotta trap some heat and some steam in there to melt the cheese as best as possible all right that's probably about as good as i can do without overcooking the burger people use american cheese for a reason it melts faster i just like the taste of this you can try to use a thermometer to gauge doneness but burgers are really easy to eyeball once you've done it a few times and you know what your desired doneness just looks like on the outside all right all that rendered fat and olive oil in there is going to make the cut sides of these buns fry up really beautifully golden brown this part works way better in a pan but honestly toasting the bun by any means available to you really improves any burger oh yeah that's gonna be good fried bread down lettuce onions i always try to make sure to push the toppings out to the edge it sucks when everything is bunched up in the middle the middle gets messy and the outside is bland i got my pickles ketchup and mustard and i think the meat has rested just long enough when i can just pick it up with my fingers it's just a minute or two of resting to purge the excess juice that would otherwise soggy my buns look at that nice crispy browning there you don't get that on the grill that's fried meat again a nice yielding texture even though we cook this all the way through i'll try to tackle thin patties at some point but for a home-cooked meal i think a thick patty is almost as user-friendly as squarespace everything you need to build and run a website nestled within a toasted sesame seed bun the bun in this case signifies the affordable monthly subscription you pay that covers just about everything covers squarespace hosting your site for you it also gets you so many tools for building a website even if you have next to no technical ability you just pick a template and start tweaking it you can do this part for free throw together a simple personal portfolio site or an event site or even a store i used squarespace to sell my custom chef knife recently and i will again once we've made more of them this page took about as much time to throw together as it takes to cook a burger seriously and if you're selling your time rather than a product squarespace has schedulers you can drop right into your site you can paywall content on your site and if there's ever something you can't figure out how to do there's a million help documents to consult because a million people use squarespace for doing whatever it is you're doing you're not alone draft your site for free but when you're ready to pay to publish or to register a custom domain go to squarespace dot com slash regula and save yourself 10 percent thank you squarespace and thank you to everybody out there who nagged me for years now to make a burger video i told you i'd get around to it

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,024,446

Keywords:

Id: PXjhzjs2MKE

Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2022