French Onion Burger

perhaps one of the most comforting things out there that you can possibly eat is french onion soup now most french onion soup i've gotten i'm not a huge fan and there's a reason people don't put enough love and care into it the base of a french onion soup is of course caramelized onions that's what gives it that beautiful color that sweet caramelized flavor and of course those really nice broken down tender onion bits but 99 of the time when i get a french onion soup in front of me i end up getting this big bowl of broth that just has a bunch of onion bits floating around in it and i can tell that they're not even remotely close to being caramelized because to truly caramelized onions it takes about an hour at least that's how i feel but a good french onion soup has a few things first it starts with those amazingly perfectly caramelized onions but on top of that you have that nice melted gray or cheese that's bubbly and golden brown on the top and then of course you have that really nice stock it could be a vegetable stock or a beef stock frankly i think beef provides the most flavor there it makes for a more well-rounded dish but today we're not making french onion soup we're making burgers so can you guess what we're gonna do if you guessed it nice shot we're making french onion burgers we'll start out by making those burger buns because we're gonna have to rest these in the background for quite a while so i typically like to get that out of the way first i'll go in with one cup plus two tablespoons of warm water as long as this water is warm to the touch but isn't gonna burn your finger when you touch it it should be good now while whisking i'll go in with two tablespoons of active dry yeast and once i've made sure that that's nice and well dispersed i'll slowly pour in a quarter cup of sugar once that's well combined we'll let it sit for about five to ten minutes for that yeast to wake up once that's had time to rest we'll close down our mixer and as we slowly begin mixing i'll crack in one egg a little pinch of salt and then slowly go in with about three and a half cups of all-purpose flour to finish i'll evenly sprinkle in about a third cup of vegetable oil and at this point i'll turn it up and let it mix once our dough is nice and soft we'll pull it off our dough hook and shape it into a nice ball typically i just do this by pulling down around the outsides and i like to do this until i get a nice smooth face now into a small glass bowl going with a little bit of vegetable oil then i'll drop in our nice smooth dough spin it around just a little bit to make sure nothing sticks and place a damp kitchen towel over the top to let this rise for about an hour or an hour and a half now while those buns rest we're going to take out our wagyu and cut it into cubes such that it can sit in the fridge and be nice and cold when we're ready to grind it up because of course we're not going to use pre-ground burger meat here right what i've got right here is an american wagyu strip line you can see when i bring it closer that we still have some of that really nice marbling on there not to mention a really thick fat cap across the top but it's not too fatty because if it's too fatty it's going to completely dissolve and crumble when we go to cook it but you may be wondering why we're using this and not that really high-end japanese wagyu but don't worry we got it right here we have some wagyu leftover from our egg yolk video and we're going to grind this and this together hoping to get that perfect blend of beef to fat now when we grind this meat up we want to be able to put in different pieces at different times to get that perfect blend of burger meat so my first priority will be cutting these all into similarly sized cubes which will help us get a more even grind you'll notice i'm using a different cutting board on top of my regular cutting board and that's because this is raw meat and it'll basically allow me to toss this whole thing in the dishwasher when i'm done cutting now for the american wagon you can see we have a really thick fat cap up on the top as mentioned earlier because of this we want this evenly ground into the meat so i'm going to cut that fat cap right off the top of the meat which will allow me to cut this into individual cubes and give me the control to work these in when i want that leaves us with this much leaner cut right here and each cube will of course give us that really meaty bit as you can see in one of these pieces right here there's not too much fat going on there but combine these three and boom you get something amazing for now we'll toss these back in the fridge because we want everything nice and cold when we go to grind a general rule when you're grinding things is to keep everything cold so i'll let this rest with the french onion soup of course we need a nice beef stock so i'll crank the heat up toss in a stick of my butter and once that butter melts down i'll toss in a little bit of shallot which i've just finely chopped and will give a little bit more flavor once that begins to get translucent and the butter starts to brine a little bit i'm gonna pour in a few cups of beef stock now i know we like to make everything homemade but normally i like to make my stocks like this overnight so i'm not gonna make you sit for an entire day here and watch me cook this down i'll put this off behind me and let this go until we essentially have a nice syrup this is gonna be that beautiful jew that we pour over the top of our burger when it's done now i know i've tried to stress this already but caramelized onions take some time but they take some time for a reason they're one of the best most delicious things out there and i truly mean that i know it's hard to believe that you can take something like an onion and turn it into something that's almost sweet and candy-like but you really can't this little baby can turn to something amazing now because i have so many onions here i'm going to be using a mandolin to just really quickly slice all those into super super even strips but to start i'm going to be using my chef's knife to cut all these directly in half then score the edge and peel off that outer layer of shell after this they're ready to grind on the mandolin but first i'll repeat the same process with the rest of my onions now again it's just a lot easier for me in this situation to use a mandolin i'll get those slices perfect similar and faster so i'm just gonna go in nice swift motions down the line here and you can see that what's coming out on the bottom is these are these perfect beautiful strips of onion it's just nice to have them all be even and yeah i know this looks a little bit lazy and it is but it's also extraordinarily convenient you know it's great we're just a couple onions in here but i'm gonna be totally honest i am starting to cry a little bit if you're one of those lucky people that has contacts and doesn't cry from onions this is one of those times where you can be a really good helping hand in the kitchen right now for me over the years i've looked at all sorts of different things to try to help me not cry in the kitchen when cutting onions i've worn swim goggles before are you crying i've chewed all sorts of gum to try to help too but that didn't work at all i can't see anything good thing i'm using the safety we're not filming right no no all right thank you once these onions are all finely chopped i'll take out any of the bits with the roots that don't look nice and then throw the rest into a bowl i do want to mention how beautiful these look i mean i know it looks lazy and crazy to use something like that but it really does give you those perfect strands of onion now we're ready to caramelize for our caramelized onions we'll start with a few tablespoons of butter and immediately follow this with just a little bit of vegetable oil i find for whatever reason that a mix between the two helps once that's all melted we'll toss in all of our onions try to use something big enough where you can fit all of them at once immediately i'll hit those with just a little bit of salt and then begin to mix them around so that they get evenly coated in that oil and butter once those start to cook down more get lightly translucent i'm gonna go across the top with a little bit of sugar i'll mix that around just a little bit making sure to coat that evenly as well and then just a little bit more sugar what the sugar here will do is basically help caramelize those even more even better think about it like a creme brulee to finish off a creme brulee and get that nice crust at the top you sprinkle a little sugar on top and then torch it we're essentially doing something similar here but basically just coating these onions and that sugar applying heat and letting that sugar caramelize on top of the caramelization that the onions are already going to give us this is basically just going to supercharge our caramelized onions once they look like this we're going to cook them just like this over about medium heat for an hour stirring constantly just look at how creamy and delicious these look now and then wait till you see them momentarily our buns have risen so much that they lifted the towel several inches off the top of the bowl you can see it's bulging right out of the side of the bowl here and there's probably a lot of silly jokes i can make about this but jokes aside this is exactly what you want when you're trying to let something rise i'm gonna peel off that wet towel to expose the dough essentially what we've made here is a muffin now of course these wouldn't be good buns without a quick slap look at it deflate like that it's amazing to think about how many bubbles are in this piece of dough right here i'll move this aside and hit my cutting board with a little bit of flour we want to make sure everything's nice and lubed up when we go to put that piece of dough down now i'm gently going to pull this out of our bowl and i'll just say how amazed i am and how fluffy this is i can tell you right now these are going to be some damn good buns roll that around for just a second to make sure it's nice and floured we don't want to over saturate it with flour but we want it floured enough that it won't stick to anything as you already know i like my buns big haha so the first thing i'll do is make this into a nice log that we're going to cut from make sure it's nice and even because oftentimes i see people make a log that's a lot smaller on the edges which means you have buns that are smaller from the edges get it as even as possible once you've done that i'll come right through the middle of my buns with a bench scraper look at that it's a person sorry about that now once we've cut it i'll reshape each of those logs and then divide them into three buns for a moment i'll set these aside while i bring out my baking sheet now once we have our baking sheet set up i'll take each of the dough balls with the smooth side up flip them over and begin pinching in from the outsides to make a ball once i've pinched in enough times that the bottom seems to get a little bit sticky i'll gently move this off to the side and with my hand in a claw shape roll in a clockwise motion until i get the perfect ball once the bun is complete you can see how soft smooth and perfect it is and now i can tap it down just a little bit to make sure it gives me the right bun shape and then drop it straight onto that mat i'll do the same thing with the remainder of my dough balls pinching in to get that smooth top and a sticky bottom almost to something that looks like a soup dumpling if you've ever had one of those you can see as i was warning again they will sometimes get slightly different sized buns and honestly that's okay i can already tell this bad boy over here is going to be a lot bigger than the other ones but for now we'll cover these up again with our kitchen towel and let these rest for another 15-20 minutes or so to let them come back up a little bit before we bake them once those beautiful buns have rested we are all set like i said you can see that these are a lot bigger than these over here which again i did my best and the only true way to get it perfect is if you measure them all out on a scale but sometimes i'm actually okay with having one that's a little bit different than another as long as they're generally similar in size it's okay before we bake i do like to paint them with just a little egg wash which is simple i've cracked one egg and added about a tablespoon or two of water you can definitely bake these without egg wash if you want but the egg wash gives a really nice shine and to me seeing that beautiful golden brown color of buns or pastries that have been egg wash versus those that haven't it's just a big enough difference it makes it look that much more appetizing in my opinion that it's worth it in my mind why not put in just that tiny bit of extra effort to get a better product the other thing is that egg washing buns is quite fun it's one of those really satisfying things that you can do and like i've said before this silicone paint brush is one of my favorite tools in the kitchen after all food is art so using something like a paint brush makes total sense once these have all been egg washed we're going to toss these in the oven at 425 fahrenheit for about 8 to 12 minutes or so after that these babies should be ready to go [Music] before we make those patties we gotta grate our gruyere cheese this is one of the best cheeses out there my cousins are actually swiss and i remember having so much of this stuff out in switzerland when i went to visit them many years back there's nothing like a good french onion soup with this beautiful bubbly golden brown gray or cheese on top so of course we're going to top our burgers with this cheese i'm just going to quickly grate down two blocks of gruyere and have this ready so i can sprinkle it over our burgers again this cheese has to be one of my favorites out there and weirdly enough it doesn't taste amazing to me when you eat it if it hasn't been melted down or roasted yet i mean don't get me wrong it's not bad but it reminds me a little bit of swiss cheese which is my absolute least favorite cheese in the entire world in my opinion swiss cheese tastes just like plastic i get the same result if i were to grate this thing on my grater i'll do the same thing with my other block of gray iron until i have a ton of this beautiful grated cheese once i've finished grating all of our gruyere let's shake out all of our hard work there is so much cheese trapped inside this crater we'll fluff this up a little bit and then set it off to the side we are finally ready to make those burgers once our burger meat is nice and cold we're going to slowly alternate in and try to grind that perfect burger meat again we want really nice marbling that perfect mix between fat and meat so i'm going to keep that in mind as i push these in i'll let my grinder go relatively slowly so i have time to think about that order but as i wash my meat come out the other end i should be able to tell immediately whether or not i've done a good job and from what i can see this looks perfectly marbled if you see a strand of white that comes out for too long that means you put in too much fat whereas if you see a continuous streak of red you put in too much lean beef so it's just all about finding that balance i want to make sure i get every last bit of that meat out because this stuff is precious and we're not messing around one bit with this french onion burger once that beef is all ground i'm actually not gonna season it up right now because with wagyu i like to have all the flavor that's just in the meat itself i guess if you're using burger meat and you want to season it up right now you can but i'm just gonna sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper once we go to cook these off so let's turn these into patties and get a nice sear on them now from my burger meat i'll make a nice little patty with my hands roll that up and once i have a nice hot pan place that down then we smash and once that's done i'll add a little bit of salt and a nice bit of fresh cracked pepper now once it's ready to flip i'll come under in one sweep motion and flip it over after that we add our cheese press that down again then place on our lid once that cheese is nice and melty we'll lift this off and our first cheesy delicious patty is complete for our next burger same thing press that down to get your smash patty then let it cook [Music] tell me those aren't some of the shiniest buns you've ever seen and just like i said some of them will be more perfect than others i don't know who could fit this thing in their mouth there's somebody out there for sure but it's not me but like i said there's a burger bun here for everybody i have to say these are perfectly cooked shiny smooth golden brown and as i can tell from the edge of this piece right here extraordinarily fluffy but if you don't believe me i'll open this one up [Music] let me just do the same thing with the second piece here look at how fluffy those buns are again cooking another one of my patties here and once i get cleanly under it with my spatula i'll get in that perfect flip look at that golden brown crust just like we wanted a nice steak i want that beautiful golden brown hard flaky crust that is flavor then i pile on my cheese and in the corner of my pan i put just a little bit of water to make some steam and cover it right up now once all that cheese is bubbly and melted we'll set this patty aside let's put those burgers together baby we finally made it to the burger assembly stage i'm gonna gently come through this bun and cut it right in half getting such a nice clean cut through the bun means we've made a really great bun here so if you've done the same thing give yourself a pat on the back i know it sounds crazy but i'm making the active choice today not to toast this bun have you ever had a burger that's got these really soft fluffy buns maybe on a potato bun or something that's purposely not toasted and is so soft and chewy something about these buns today is so soft and fluffy that i just don't want to mess with it i hope you know it's not laziness because again we make everything from scratch but i just want to have that chewiness today to assemble my burger i'll start with our first patty on the bottom of the bun here now some of you might be confused what you're looking at here but for those of you that guessed you're absolutely right these are our caramelized onions and yes this is all of them i haven't eaten any they came out of this massive pan we started with maybe five six onions and we've ended up with this now no it's absolutely not burnt instead what you're looking at here are these chewy deeply caramelized bits of onion so our next step here will be adding some of that caramelized onion right on top of the burger this right here is what you should use as the base of a french onion soup not some pathetic little pile of these half-assed barely sliced onions that haven't even really been cooked next we'll add a second patty onto our burger here and at this point in time another pile of our gruyere cheese and i'll show you why i want to torch this so i can get some of the cheese to that golden brown bubbliness that you'd often see on a french onion soup i'll hold my torch far enough away that i'm not actually cooking the patty anymore instead i'm just getting this really nice bubbly golden brown bit on top of some of that cheese you can't tell me that this doesn't make your mouth water just a little bit now once we've done that the only thing left here is our sauce just like those caramelized onions this beef stock has reduced down to nearly nothing but the flavor in here is absolutely overwhelming i've strained out those shallots and added just a little bit of flour to make a roux and if anything's at all oily from that butter you can add a little bit more water too then we have this perfect gravy i'll add some of that gravy right over the top of my burger and once i place down this bun we are ready to eat can i just say that there are many great things in this world and lots of them have already been discovered but i think today we've truly found the french onion burger now let me start by saying that this thing looks absolutely fantastic and yes i know it's upside down but look at the juice dripping out of this thing all of that amazing beef stock that we worked so hard to get and out of that sticks these beautifully caramelized onions this isn't one of those clean burgers that you can eat without any stuff on your hands this is a messy burger and i'm totally here for it now just so i don't keep talking i say i dive right in here let's do it whoa that that's crazy wow so much is going through my head right now i'm just going to take a moment let me just start by saying that this is up there on the list of the top five burgers i've ever had and obviously i don't say that for just every video in fact i've never said it for a burger video we've made yet something about this burger is truly special we've put so much time and effort into each individual component of what we have here and hell you don't need wagyu toss the wagyu aside just get a few nice rib eyes and grind those up in your food processor at home you don't even need the special attachment i have pulse that up a little bit until it's nice and ground or even grounded by hand with a knife and you have really nice fresh burger meat then all you need to buy is a few onions and you don't need to make the stock fresh either it'll be fantastic either way just do what i did with a bit of butter those shallots and a couple pre-made things of chicken or beef stock can even use vegetable stock if you want i am telling you right now that this burger is insane it will blow your mind each bite you are hit with so many levels of these flavors that come from all over the place that bun is so fluffy with just some salt and pepper and that flavor in the meat naturally that meat is delicious and that little crust on there makes up for the lack of a crust on the actual burger bun itself which you can do if you want and those caramelized onions they're soft chewy creamy these are not onions this is a dessert i am telling you right now that this burger is an absolute home run in every possible way imaginable the last thing here is we've toasted off that gray or cheese which if you want you can do with a broiler get those golden brown dark spots to resemble that french onion soup i feel like i've said this before but it's not often you come across something in food that truly puts you in a state of awe and that's what i'm in with this french onion burger this thing is absurd i appreciate you for watching this video thank you for supporting the channel let's keep rolling let's keep making amazing food and i really really hope you stay around for what's coming next because it's gonna be awesome don't forget to tap that subscribe button and hit the little bell for the notifications because you don't want to miss those i'm still uploading every single day for you which can be hard at times but it's a lot of fun and i enjoy it in the meantime happy cooking thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Nick DiGiovanni

Views: 4,426,097

Keywords: frenchonion, burger, wagyu, Nick DiGiovanni, Cooking, Food, Chef, Recipe, Gordon Ramsay, Kitchen, ASMR, MasterChef, Osmo Salt, Salt Bae, Learn To Cook, Knife Drop, Cookbook, Kid-Friendly, Kid’s Recipes, Kid’s Cooking

Id: TFdcQkcVf7I

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021