How to Make the Best Smashed Burgers

[Music] i love a big thick juicy burger it's tender it's cooked to medium rare it's almost perfection but what i love about it is that crust on the outside especially when it gets craggy and a little bit crisp today i'm going to make a burger that really is all about the crust we're smashing burgers and it's so fast and so much fun i'm going to take you along for the ride now these cook really really quickly as i said so we're going to work on all the other components before we actually get to the burger starting off with lettuce now you can choose any type of lettuce that you'd like i'm going with good old classic iceberg here i love the crunch and the refreshing flavor that it adds now i need to core this so all you do is you smash the iceberg on your counter just like that flip it over and you can actually dig out the core pretty easy and i'm making burgers for two i'm going to take off this little petticoat of slightly wilted lettuce get rid of that and go for some of the more crispy pieces inside so i'm just going to put aside a couple of nice pieces no browning and now how about a nice juicy ripe tomato summer tomatoes are the best but if you're buying these in the supermarket in the winter look for those that are ripened on the vine they taste a lot better and when you're storing tomatoes at home store them with this core side down they'll actually age a little slower that way if only that worked on everyone so i'm going to take a paring knife and just cut out this core i'm holding the paring knife at an angle here can't smash the tomato to get rid of the core and now i'm going to slice this tomato if your knife is pretty dull you can always use a serrated knife for this all right now one of the hallmarks of some really great smashed burgers out there is that special sauce that you put on the burger and again this is optional if you just want to go for ketchup and mustard go for it but i'm going to make a little bit of a special sauce here so we're starting off with some shallot i need a tablespoon of minced shallot cut it in half with the peel on peel it and then since i want this to be really pretty finely chopped i'm going to make the cuts very close together so i'm spacing my knife oh about an eighth of an inch or even less apart and take your time you see how my hand up here is nowhere near the blade so now i'm going to do the same thing go across here and then just take it right over now i only need a tablespoon that looks about right let's just get any real big pieces there and i am going to measure this sometimes i don't measure i'll just eyeball it because you have a good feel but really this sauce is all about ratios so i'm going to tell you to measure all right who wants a pickle we're not just going to slice pickles here we're actually going to add pickles to our special sauce it's almost a take on a russian dressing so these are just dill pickles a spear one here set that jar aside for just a moment now similar to the shallot i want to finely chop this and i only need about a teaspoon and a half so i'm going to cut these in half so i have a nice flat surface and same thing as i did with the shallot just make horizontal cuts and then right across vertical all right and i need a teaspoon and a half of pickle teaspoon and that looks like a half a teaspoon now i want to use a little bit of this brine as well obviously it's salted it's brine but it's got some great flavors in it too so we're going to use a half a teaspoon now of course we need a creamy sauce so we're going to use some mayonnaise we use two tablespoons of mayonnaise and a little bit of ketchup got a teaspoon and a half of ketchup and one of the hallmarks of a really good sauce is that it's tangy it's salty it's also a little bit sweet so i'm going to add some sugar i've got an eighth of a teaspoon of sugar remember ketchup is already pretty sweet and an eighth of a teaspoon of black pepper or if you like it spicy a little bit more all right let me just stir this together that turns that nice kind of rosy hue that looks lovely you're going to want to make a lot of this too and it actually can stay in the fridge for a couple of days now let's talk about cheese we are not using gourmet artisan cheese we are using cheese that is individually wrapped in plastic these were actually engineered to melt so why not use science to our benefit so here's some prep all you have to do is unwrap the cheese and what i like to do i will just fold that back over so that they stay nice and separated until i'm ready to use them when seconds count this pre-unwrapping of the cheese will come in handy and let's talk about buns nice soft buns these are squishy they've got a nice flavor and you should be able to really compact them in your hands before you eat them so i'm just going to split these and then i'm just going to put about a tablespoon of the sauce on each of the bun tops oh yeah all right what are we missing how about some beef now i've got some ground beef that i picked up at the supermarket eight ounces of ground beef here now the reason that i am recommending that you get supermarket ground beef instead of grinding it at home yourself that's because they tend to grind the beef pretty fine it's actually pretty tightly compacted that tight grind is actually working in our favor it releases a sticky protein called myosin each time that they grind the meat and we want that sticky protein to be released here because these burgers are very delicate they're very thin so we needed to add a little bit of cohesion so this is eight ounces again of 80 percent lean now that sounds a little bit fattier than we usually call for but that's also by design these burgers cook so quickly and they're very thin they're cooked to almost well done so you want a burger that has a bit of fat in it so you can go with 80 lean up to 85 percent lean but anything that's leaner than that is going to give you a really dry burger so i need to zero off my scale i went ahead and lined it with a little bit of plastic wrap i like to do that anytime i'm working with raw meat and again i need two ounce patties and as i weigh them i'm just going to put them on this plate so i've got the meat all portioned out here and i'm not going to put these into patties i'm just going to shape them into loose balls at this point i don't want to compact the meat we're going to save the actual smashing and forming of the patties to when the burgers hit the pan so that is all the prep looking good i'm going to go wash my hands it's time to start cooking and we're going to heat up our pan i'm using a great 12 inch cast iron skillet it really heats up well it's going to give us just the right crust i'm going to add a quarter teaspoon of vegetable oil to my pan it's really well seasoned but every time you use a pan it's a good idea to give it a little bit of oil and then just smear it around the bottom just to make sure that it goes into all of the pores of the pan now this is a cold pan this is why i can do it without tongs all right and now i'm going to turn the burner to medium low and i'm going to heat the pan for five minutes just started my timer there cast iron heats up really slowly and quite unevenly so if you blast it with heat at the very start you'll end up with some hot spots in your pan and cooler spots obviously so for more even heating just over a medium-low heat for a good five minutes so while that's heating let's talk a little bit about my saucepan here now we're using this as a burger press because we notice that when you go to press a burger using a spatula your hand is offset from the spatula and you end up going in it at an angle and it's hard to get a really nice flat patty so we're going to use this saucepan this is just a little saucepan here and i've wrapped some foil over it so that it can stay nice and clean and i'm going to use this as a burger press i'm going to grab the sides of it and just press straight down so we're just going to wait for our pan to heat so i'm starting to see a little bit of smoke in the pan i know it's hot enough it's preheated so i'm going to turn up the heat to high so i'm going to take two of these mounds of meat gotta work fast here so i'm gonna place them about three inches apart in the skillet there we go and then use that saucepan i'm grabbing the sides not the handle to really smash these down you don't have to worry too much about being very aggressive we want these to stick to the skillet so that's why we're smashing them in the pan i'm going to hit these with about an eighth of a teaspoon of kosher salt and a little bit of pepper to taste and we're going to let this first side go for two minutes so it can get some really beautiful brown color on that first side all right so these are looking great three quarters of the top of these patties are no longer pink so that's a good indication that these are ready to be flipped and you can see this spatula is necessary a super thin one so that we can flip these over oh look at that beautiful color and really get in there because the burgers are sticking to the pan and again we want that amazing so only 15 seconds on the second side because the burgers are pretty much done at this point all right that's about 15 seconds let me slide this off heat so now i'm going to put these on our bottom buns and now i'm going to put a slice of cheese right on top start the melting process and we'll work on our second batch of burgers so same thing two minutes on this first side flip it over another 15 seconds on the second side all right that looks great i'm going to slide this off heat again the heat of these patties is just going to finish melting all of that cheese before i put the bun tops back on i'm going to add our fixings a little bit of iceberg here let's weigh down this lettuce with a little bit of tomato and now the top goes on that's looking pretty good right now look at that those patties are all crust still juicy oh the cheese is melted um i just got a little hint of that pickle sauce in there nice and bright and tart it's just the right amount of toppings a little bit of tomato a little bit of that crisp iceberg and the cheese is melted just perfectly i'm going to call that one smashing burger and if you want to make smashed burgers at home remember these keys use eighty percent lean ground beef shape into two ounce mounds and smash the burgers right in the skillet from america's test kitchen at home fast and fabulous smashed burgers i'm gonna smash it in my mouth thanks for watching america's test kitchen what'd you think well leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or you can just say hello you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our channel see you later i'll see you later

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 310,732

Keywords: smashed burgers, americas test kitchen, cooks illustrated, cooks country, burgers, how to make smashed burgers, smashed burger recipe, burger recipes

Id: 1KIeZ9tV3rk

Length: 11min 52sec (712 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 01 2022