Every Way to Cook a Hamburger (42 Methods) | Bon Appétit

hi everyone I'm Emil Stanek editor-at-large at Bon Appetit and this is almost every way to cook a burger you can make a burger patty out of just about anything turkey chicken fish even plants but when most people think about a burger they think about beef and the character of a burger is very much determined by the cut of beef you use some people swear by lean sore line others buy rich fatty short rib and some people love the full flavor that cuts like skirt steak offer but for my money it's all about good old-fashioned chuck chuck comes from the shoulder of the cow is super beefy and affordable and naturally clocks in at about 80% meat and 20% fat exactly what you want for a burger with tons of flavor and plenty of juiciness once the meat is ground it gets gently formed into a nice tidy 6 ounce patty with a little divot in the center to keep it from shrinking up when it cooks the biggest challenge when cooking a burger is getting as much caramelized crust as possible on the outside while nailing the perfect juicy medium-rare to medium inside and we're gonna try to do exactly that every way we can think of cast-iron burger alright we've got our burger patty we've got a preheated cast-iron pan and we're gonna get a little bit of oil in there we're gonna season our burger generously on both sides with kosher salt the more fat meat has the more salt it needs lay it down press it gently and cook it for about 4 minutes on each side beautiful we've got nice carmelization on the outside with some crispy bits around here cutting into it we got a nice wall of medium-rare very little gray and the texture looks really nice and loose very juicy hmm amazing the meat is succulent and tender the exterior is salty and complex this method may be straightforward but it delivers grill pan burger so now we're gonna use a grill pan which is just a cast-iron pan with ridges that mimic those of a grill we're gonna brush it with oil to prevent sticking season our patty and cook it for about four minutes on each side there you go so you'll notice that the Browning is concentrated along these lines where the meat was in contact with the ridges but the rest is kind of gray not enough browning for my taste the inside looks pretty perfect I mean it's tasty but I'm not sure I see the point in the grill pan when the standard cast iron delivered such better browning preseason to burger you've probably noticed that we've been seasoning the outside of the patty but not the inside this time we're gonna try to mix some salt into the ground meat itself salt our beef knead it well to distribute form our patty and cook it for four minutes aside in this hot cast-iron let's check it out time to try our salt inside burger experiment it's plenty crispy looking cutting it open okay so this is interesting it definitely cooked less evenly and you can see how that outer layer is gray and kind of dense looking that's because the salt actually breaks down proteins in the meat causing it to stick to itself instead of being loose and tender yeah the texture is much more like a sausage it's bouncier and less tender you know I'm gonna stick to salting the outside of the burgers from now on frozen burger same patty but this one's been frozen solid we're gonna oil the pan seasoned our burger and this is gonna cook for more like seven minutes per side all right let's check it out because this guy spend a bit more time in the pan we got slightly more color but nothing too significant the inside is mushy and beautiful but a bit more gray than our fresh patty hmm it's not bad but it's not an improvement on our fresh patty but it can be done okay let's go to the backyard so I can air my clothes out a bit gasps grilled burger three ways we got three patties that have all been salted and oiled we've got our gas grill this first one is our standard beef patty this one is frozen so it's completely hard and then this is another fresh patty that we're gonna put an ice cube on top of allegedly to keep it moist and apparently we're not supposed to flip it until it melts we'll just take these off when they're done [Music] gasps grilled burger Revenge of the grill marks you know unless you got a killer gas grill it's hard to produce even as much heat as a cast-iron pan so we're looking at way less browning the interior good color but it does look a tad dry hmm yeah I want a lot more browning and because the heat was a bit lower it lost some juice as it cooked it's fine nothing to write home about gasps grilled frozen burger so this was on there for quite some time it had to defrost and then cook through all the way cutting in yeah definitely less even and you're seeing some kind of weird gradients hmm you know it's a bit juicier than the last one maybe because that fat was colder and rendered differently but not a method I'd repeat unless I had to Ice Cube burger I don't think that Ice Cube did anything at all it certainly didn't help the exterior and yeah the inside is cooked pretty unevenly probably because one side was colder hmm yeah I mean it's fine but it's certainly not juicier or better in any way water does not make food moist people fat does charcoal grilled burger oh right we got a burger that's been salted and oiled we got a hot charcoal grill we're just gonna lay this down right here okay it's been about four minutes let's give it a flip looks done to me here we have our charcoal grills burger got a nice sear on the outside definitely getting some of that charcoal smoky sort of smell Wow look at that that's really beautifully cooked perfect medium-rare and it's still nice and juicy you can tell hmm that is just the taste of summer juicy beef beautiful crust and that charcoal smoke flavor this is so backyard iconic this is a really great way to cook a burger you know it's kind of cold out here I'm ready to head back into the kitchen debauchee grilled burger so here we have a hibachi style grill we're gonna salt our patty and let our rip it's burning binchotan charcoal which is special because it burns really really hot and really cleanly so we can do this inside under the hood without smoking up the place voila hibachi burger Wow this smells great decent color I'm pretty impressed with that grill and the interior love to see it looks pretty perfect mmm Wow the flavor is amazing could have gotten a little bit more of a crust but the grill flavor is awesome as the fat and the juices drip onto the charcoal and kind of vaporize and perfume the meat in a really delicious way YUM butter Sears burger back to cast-iron except this time we're gonna grease our pan with a bit of butter seasoned the patty four minutes on each side should be good to go well it's smells buttery and delicious but we're not seeing great carmelization probably because of the water content of the butter the inside ten-blocks great nothing to complain about you know I feel like I'm barely tasting the butter at all and I'm missing that crust it's not bad but this didn't add all that much in my opinion steamed burger I swear this is actually a thing we've got our burger patty we've got a steamer setting this pot of boiling water we're just gonna lay it down right here close the lid and come back in about eight minutes ooh boy that looks done all right definitely not all that appealing looking great áown USA no direct heat no browning and it really shrunk up a bit hmm the inside looks juicy but we've got a fat gray ring all around it probably because it was cooking from all sides at once no texture isn't awful it's weird to eat this much beef with no browning at all could be good with a slider patty but it's just pretty unpleasant to me toaster burger why not right seasoned this guy up slide it into the toaster and we'll see what comes out on the other side okay well it popped and it get it out of a toaster burger Wow well we kind of scratched it up a little bit getting it out of the toaster I'm not enamored of this exterior I just don't think the heat was quite high enough so that said it looks a lot better than some of the burgers we've seen today the inside actually looks pretty good I'm not gonna lie it got to the right temperature I'll be at a little rare fun fact the place that claims to have invented the hamburger sandwich Louie's lunch in New Haven Connecticut uses weird vertical broilers that are not that different from a home toaster mercenaire browning certainly juicy could've been a lot worse for sure ironed burger no room service burger is ever gonna be a hot and fresh enough for me so if I'm staying in a hotel I'm just gonna fire up the iron salt my burger generously on both sides with salt spray it with the Pam that I snuck through airport security and go to town I'm gonna flip it and finish the other side Wow okay honestly I'm pretty impressed with what's going on here the brownie is even almost Smashburger level although I'm a bit concerned about the squishing and moisture loss the inside nice this might be a sleeper hit hmm that's a damn good burger it's a bit drier than our standard smash burger but honestly it's better than a solid 70% of our methods this is pretty great deep-fried burger we got a burger we got a deep fryer we're gonna season this bad boy on both sides and drop it into our fryer set to 350 degrees for about 12 minutes tada I'm not impressed by the way this looks we might have needed higher heat cutting into it the temp isn't awful but it has that same kind of gray ring all around the way that our steamed burger did and I think that's because it was totally surrounded by heat mm-hmm I mean there's not a horrible but definitely not better than our cast-iron burger not sure I would pull out the deep fryer for this one waffle burger had to do it friends burger salt hit our waffle iron with some cooking spray and do the damn thing there's nothing I want to say it's just depressing at this point oh wow there it is I mean it looks kind of cool to be honest decent color those points of contact but otherwise pretty pale yeah that's seriously overcooked we definitely squished the hell out of it so it lost a lot of moisture Wow I taste like a covered curia burger it's so gross bad rotisserie burger Oh okay we're gonna take this apparatus we're gonna strap our patty in trying to squish it too much okay get it in there close the door and get it spinning and there's our rotisserie burger so this is a situation looks like we lost quite a bit of juice but the exterior isn't the worst we've seen today it's getting in there definitely on the rarer side really uneven definitely way less juicy than our other burgers they lost a lot of foul it was spinning and the outside doesn't have the depth of flavor I'm after I'll save the rotisserie for chicken thank you very much smash burger now for something a little different we have a slightly smaller wad of ground beef we've got our nicely seasoned diner griddle and instead of making it patty we're just gonna drop it on there and use a spatula to smash it flat hit it with salt flip and season again and there is our smash burger the beautiful thing here is just how much carmelization we got on the outside a beautiful even layer of crisp eNOS check that inside still nice and pink good looking texture but certainly more cooked than some of the others mmm YUM this is definitely a favorite of mine that exterior flavor is out of control and still plenty juicy and tender I honestly think this is one of the most foolproof ways to make a delicious burger there is it's like the Platonic ideal of the roadside diner burger frozen smash burger okay same thing but this time we throws our wad of beef for about 15 minutes to get it good and cold which some people say produces a better smash burger wish it good flip let's check it out good color here but not quite as good as our first smash burger maybe because the meat took longer to heat up the inside a bit more rare not bad-looking mm-hmm honestly it's hard to tell the difference I had heard that chilling the meat would prevent fat from rendering out but I'm not buying it onions Spanish burger okay spoiler alert this is one of my favorite burgers of all time and omage to a place called white manna in Hackensack New Jersey we're gonna put our beef down shower it with Finley sliced onions smash it season with salt flip it more salt and there it is beautiful even crust love to see it what's really interesting is what's going on in the other side though it kind of steamed in the onion juices God it smells amazing the inside looks nice just like our other smash Burke's so so good it's like a smash burger wearing onion perfume so much flavor heaven okay let's head back outside shall we grilled smash burger can we make a smash burger on a grill we're gonna try we're gonna smash our ball of beef onto this grill heated griddle and let it do its thing looks good to me so here we have our alfresco smash burger great crispy caramelize a ssin on this side just like our stovetop versions the inside looks great YUM pretty much exactly what we got indoors both better scenery if I'm cooking burgers on a gas grill this is definitely my preferred way to do it smoked burger smoke em if you got em we got our burger we got our smoker let's do this thing okay then not a whole lot of browning going on it's definitely darkened somewhat but the temp was too low to get any real browning smell smoky though the inside Wow looks pretty even but also maybe very rare hmm yeah smoke y'all bright a smidge dried out really missing that pressed you probably would be better if we seared it afterwards or smoked it at a higher temperatures all burger okay we're gonna cook this here patty with a Sears all which is basically just a fancy double blowtorch I'm gonna sit down for this one get the other side oh right let's check this out so the Browning is kind of concentrated in a few areas we've got some charred burned bits you know the Sears all is really more for finishing already cooked things than cooking them through the inside is pretty raw yikes you know it's too rare for me it's cold in the middle no thanks yeah this seems like a good time to head back into the kitchen Suvi burger now we're gonna get fancy and sciency ensue via burger we're gonna slide our patty into this bag then suck all the air out and seal it now we're gonna place it in this pot that's fitted with an immersion circulator which will keep it at a consistent 120 degrees we're gonna check on this in about 45 minutes phase one complete now we'll cut open our bag get a little oil into our preheated pan dry our burger off and sear it hard on both sides alright looks good to go here we have our sous-vide and seared burger I'm a little disappointed by how little color we got here but I was afraid to take it further because the inside was already up to temp cutting in yeah not loving that sous-vide cooking is way better for a bigger cut of meat not a quick cooking one like this mmm yeah totally fine a little overcooked yeah the payoff just isn't there microwaved burger they're making me do this in case you hadn't guessed we got a microwave we got a burger patty we're gonna season it transfer it to a plate pop it in and cook it for two and a half minutes Oh Lord that's got to be done so here is our burger cooked with low-level radiation it looks really gnarly and clearly lost a lot of its juice no browning to speak of and it's a little pink in the middle but it cooked really unevenly let's get this over with well it tastes like beef but it's definitely worse than our Xtreme burger well no reason to cook a burger this way period dehydrated burger why do people climb Mount Everest because it's their season it with salt open this dehydrator up get our burger in there shut it and we're gonna let it go at 158 degrees for four and a half hours let's check it out that is something all right this looks pretty disturbing it's a very dark almost like a black bean burger or something like that let's take a look at the inside Wow I mean it looks I'm it good and honestly kind of scared to eat this because it's been in the danger zone for so long oh no exterior is like leather it's so weirdly tough ah bad do not do this part our burger okay we've cooked a lot of burgers at this point so now we're gonna try it not cooking one at all here we've got some ground chuck we're gonna add an egg yolk some diced onion some salt a little olive oil we're making a very minimal tartare here formed into a patty and there's our tartare burger obviously this is raw just beef with mix-ins I'm gonna cut it in half which is pretty unnecessary yep still raw beef you know I love steak tartare but for some reason it's kind of daunting on a bun mmm it's totally delicious it would be a lot better if this bun was toasted to create some texture and temperature contrast I don't think I could eat this whole thing it's a really cool way to eat beef hand-chopped burger now we're gonna do something a little different here we have six ounces of chuck that we've frozen a bit to firm up and then we're gonna cut it by hand into a nice even quarter inch dice now we're gonna form it into a nice loose patty get some oil into our pan season the hell out of it and cook it for about four minutes per side beautiful that exterior is really gorgeous the roughness of the chopped meat created a lot of surface area too lots of browning and these nice crispy craggy bits the inside is not as evenly cooked to some of our ground patties but it looks really juicy and I love how kind of loosely textured it is that tastes amazing so beefy and moist the texture is so different and fantastic there's quite falls apart in your mouth definitely labor intensive but a really cool take on a burger for sure Mixon burger three ways so we've already established that we do not like to mix salt into our burgers but there are a whole lot of things that people add to burgers that they swear make them better in this one we're gonna add some cold cubes of butter then we're gonna add some mayo to this one and this last one is gonna get a few tablespoons of smooth peanut butter gosh this looks gross form these into patties season each one with salt get these guys on the heat all right let's take a look butter burger I mean it looks like a nicely caramelized burger and I think that has to do with the milk solids in the butter rendering out and browning which is interesting the interior it's nicely cooked but it seems like there are some pockets where butter used to be mmm it's good juicy but not juicier than a regular burger and I think most of the butter just kind of rendered out into the pan I'd rather put some butter on the bun honestly I'm not sure if this is a win mayo burger I'm actually kind of psyched on this because I love mayonnaise on a burger so maybe I'll like it in it the texture seems a little bit on the loose side and we got good color because of the egg and the sugar in the mayo cutting in hmm oddly it looks more well-done even though it cooked for the same amount of time hmm only it's better than our standard patty I'm for the Mayo added anything I'd much rather just have mayo on the bun peanut butter burger this got really crusty and again I think that's because there are naturally occurring sugars in the peanut butter that encourage carmelization a nice kind of crispy craggy bits here and it smells kind of nutty I guess the inside looks pretty nice although a little less even that is weird it is like eating a burger and smelling someone's PB&J at the same time I do not like that moral of the story no mix-ins people Juicy Lucy I know I just said that I don't want things in my burger we're gonna try out a Minnesota specialty known as a Juicy Lucy we're gonna form two patties out of this beef put some American cheese in there and press it gently to seal season cook it in our hot cast-iron for about four minutes on each side and that my friends is a Juicy Lucy liking the color here but the shape is funky we couldn't make our little dimple in the middle so it shrunk up a bit but the interior is supposed to really be the exciting part and there it is melty Susie cheese the temp is still pretty nice mmm tastes great I love American cheese on a burger so why not in it at the same time I wouldn't say it tastes better than a regular cheeseburger but it's a cool party trick for sure baked burger oven time this burger is salted and oiled and we're gonna pop it into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes and that my friends is a baked burger pretty uninspiring looking it's gray and it feels a little bit leathery the inside really uneven you can see that this side got more heat from the sheet pan and this side not so much yeah honestly it is really similar to our steamed burger I hate how the top is almost round and the bottom is well-done yuck roasted burger so baked was a bust now we're gonna increase the heat and decrease the time 475 degrees for about seven minutes that should do it somehow this looks almost less cooked than our baked burger again it's super uneven way more cooked down here than it is up here the metal is just such a better conductor of heat than the air is I'm not excited about this yeah a lot of textures going on here and none of them are good it's a more exaggerated version of our baked burger no bueno roiled burger reuler time we're gonna put our patty in there for about six minutes and see what comes out the other side ooh okay that looks about done so a lot of restaurants broil their burgers but they have much more powerful units our home broiler not so much hardly any browning on top and the bottom a much to look at either the inside actually looks better than our other oven methods but it definitely shrunk up in a funky way it's kind of loosey-goosey yeah I'm not into how gray this tastes juicy but seriously lacking in browned burger flavor you know this oven doesn't seem to be working too well for us why don't we try the Easy Bake Oven burger all right folks we got a mini burger patty we got our Easy Bake Oven it actually feels kind of warm we're gonna salt it get it on to this special little tray and slide it in and now we're gonna use this ridiculous tool here to you I mean you but also kind of cute obviously this burger is a little too small for this bun it's definitely cooked looking but it's just a little Huckabee fanned that underside is very unappealing looking I mean it was cooked with a light bulb the inside actually still has some pink to it which is a little disturbing poof it tastes like the burgers they served in my middle school cafeteria put a hint of burning plastic nasty tan to oven burger this one's a twofer we got a hot pan we're gonna get a little oil in it seasoned our burger and then sear it on both sides just to get a crust on it then we're gonna transfer to this rack and finish it in the oven [Music] voila so it didn't get any new color in the oven and since we were trying not to overcook the burger on the stove we pulled it before we got the kind of crust we wanted the inside looks pretty nicely cooked a little bit of gray around the edges it's not bad by any means but I'm missing that crust and this wasn't better than if we just given it another a few minutes in the pan reversed seared burger okay let's try to do the exact opposite this burger we oiled and salted and we're gonna put it into this 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes just until the inside is rare then we're gonna take it out and now that it's fully cooked we're gonna sear it in a hot pan for a minute or so on each side just to get some color reversed seared burger the exterior here is quite appealing Browning is a lot easier to achieve when the outside has been given a head start in the oven that interior very pretty nice and even hardly any gray at all and very juicy looking how it's really nice much better than our sous vide or our panda oven that said it's not markedly better than our pan seared burger and it took longer so I'm not sure I see the point in any of these 2 step methods honestly you know I think I'm ready for a little fresh air fire pit burger three ways oh right we've got three burgers here this first one we're gonna put on this preheated lava stone this one we're gonna put on this rack directly on top of the coals and this foil-wrapped burger is gonna go right here we're gonna come back flip these halfway through and take them off of there ready lava stone burger you can tell that lava stone was superheated look at that gorgeous browning that stone provided really direct heat and protection from flare-ups at the same time which we love and the inside looks great a hair overcooked that's really my fault that crust is amazing so flavorful and just the faintest whisper of wood smoke I really like this method YUM wood grilled burger so this one was cooked directly over the cold and it shows very aggressive caramelization a little charring even really nice the inside really pretty a smidge overcooked again that's my bad hmm really tasty big wood smoke energy YUM a bit less juicy than our lava stone burger look still excellent the fire pit is definitely over performing foil packet burger well first things first we got to get it open Tammis wrapped up tight oh yeah that's not nice kind of bra over here I mean it just kind of steamed in that packet because there was nowhere for the moisture to go let's cut into it oh yeah ugly interior very rare over here more cooked over here yeah no not a good method no need to waste good foil to make a bad burger yuck George Foreman burger the lean mean fat reducing grilling machine we're gonna season our Burke spray our George Foreman with a little cooking spray get our patty in and close it up all right let's give it a try so we've got some grill marks reminiscent of our grill pan burger I'm concerned about how squished it looks though the inside yeah that's overcooked definitely in medium-well territory yeah pretty dry and grainy I mean the promise of the George Foreman grill is that it squishes the fat and juice out of the meat and lets it run off which but this is not a good burger make in my opinion miss me with this one air fried burger we got our burger patty we got our droid thing salt both sides brush it with a little bit of oil open up our weirdo box and flop our burger in that's gonna cook at 350 degrees for I don't know sometime give it a flip and there's our air fried burger this looks truly awful the outside just looks desiccated cutting it open well it's cooked a temperature but there's definitely some graying around the edges a product of that ambient indirect heat not a good burger I hate that thing okay today we cooked a whole lot of burgers a whole lot of ways what do we learn well at the end of the day a good burger is one of life's simple pleasures and as such are more straightforward methods ended up yielding the best results no need to make things too complicated all you need is quality beef high heat and maybe a little smoke and you've got the kind of burger that dreams are made of have a favorite way to cook a burger that you didn't see here today leave it in the comments [Music]

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 3,573,358

Rating: 4.1178813 out of 5

Keywords: burger, cheeseburger, hamburger, every way, every way to cook, amiel stanek, amiel bon appetit, amiel makes, almost every, amiel, every way to make, every way hamburger, every way to cook a hamburger, how to hamburger, how to burger, chuck burger, grilled burger, cast iron burger, ice cube burger, best burger, how to burgers, best burger recipe, fried burger, deep fried burger, how to cook hamburgers, how to make hamburgers, make hamburgers, hamburgers, food, bon appetit

Id: 9Y1XazyDiwc

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/DrAmbulanceDriver]

cuts into raw beef patty

"The inside looks pretty good!"

[u/zwezas]

I love the idea of this series, but no matter how many times I watch it, I can't stand the voice-over.

The out of sync hand gestures and fake eating noises just completely ruin it for me.

[u/steveofthejungle]

The onion burger is a big thing in Oklahoma and it's very good

[u/Z_Zircon]

> *the bun is bright red from the juices*

​

"Mmmff... perfectly cooked"

[u/Mrhiddenlotus]

If you can see pink on the outside, the burger is under done.

[u/amyadamsinjodhpurs]

Fun fact for those who felt these burgers were too "bloody": the red liquid dripping from a medium-rare burger isn't blood; it's myoglobin. And since Amiel (or, rather, the BA helpers) ground all of the meet fresh, it's perfectly acceptable to eat any of the burgers he made rare or medium rare, though you wouldn't want to do the same eating out etc unless you could verify the beef was ground in-house beforehand

[u/lwarzy]

I don’t know how I feel about this, experiment-wise... The mid-rare, self-grind burger is already pretty extra. They have a time and place, for sure, but I would rather see this with store-bought ground beef... I’m not sure I can explain why. Maybe because 90% of the time that what my burgers are made with. The other videos in this series are at least a little more interesting and/or fuel some inspiration, but this is such a specific “dish” that it just doesn’t work as well. 😕

[u/lelelesdx]

In my head there's a version of every way that's Amiel doing it live in the test kitchen. Why not? The biggest appeal of BA is watching the chef's personality shine through the unscripted setting. You'd have spontaneous random cameos popping in offering their takes. Then we'd get to see Amiel suffer through eating tons of burgers since schadenfreude is one of the reasons people watch Claire.

[u/manhattansinks]

man I really wish they'd reconsider the voice over. I'm only 1:47 in and I'm already irritated by the fake chewing.

I know I'm beating a dead horse here.