Jacques Pepin's Hamburgers | Kenji's Cooking Show

hey everyone it's kenji i'm here at home and today i'm going to make jacques papan's burgers so this video is another one for the japan foundation um the jackpot pen is i mean easily my biggest cooking idol um and the reason he's such an idol of mine and um i'm gonna talk as i go i'm so i'm gonna preheat start preheating this skillet here it's a little cast iron skillet um jacques pepin uses a um a what's it called a grill pan but i personally don't own any so i'm going with just the regular skillet i'm sure he would not mind and i'm setting my broiler to high so why did i pick a burger for my jacques pan recipe it's because i think to me the fact that jacques pepin [Music] despite his years and decades of being a chef and then an educator and a tv personality and all these you know cookbook author um in his latest show which was on uh called heart and soul came out a couple years ago in his latest show he doesn't hold he does a whole episode about um when he was cooking with julia um on their old show um and reminiscing about some of their favorite the favorite things that they cooked together um and so here he is after his like long career um and he just shows you how to make a hamburger and it's like the simplest thing um so that's why i chose it because i think more than anyone you know jack japan sort of embodies that nature that idea that um you know just because you have the ability and the knowledge to cook something um that would be considered by you know western standards to be sort of a fancy meal or something like that um doesn't mean that you can't also appreciate simple dishes and what could be simpler than a hamburger um so i'm starting with about five ounces of beef which is what he recommends um in his the episode of his show he actually um he actually grinds his own brisket which i think is a great way to go if you um if you have some nice fatty brisket or if you have some short ribs anything with a good amount of marbling in it you can grind it yourself um he does it he does it using a um a food processor so the easiest way to do that is you just trim off all the sort of grizzly bits and then you um i find that he puts them straight into a food processor i find that the easiest way to do it actually is to put them on a sheet tray with some the bits of meat on a sheet tray with some space separating them and throw them in the freezer for about 15 minutes so they get a little bit firm before you then pulse them in a food processor and you can of course also just use a meat grinder but he also says if you don't want to go through that trouble which today i didn't feel like it um use ground chuck so around 20 fat oops and the other thing he does is he never he doesn't season his burger until the end so i'm obviously only very loosely following it um i'll i'll season that one side and save the other side for later the reason he only seasons the burger at the end um and this is just a good rule in general for burgers is that you when you add salt to meat especially ground meat it can actually dissolve some muscle proteins that will then sort of cross link with each other and end up making your burger tougher um the effect it doesn't really matter um if you sold the surface what you definitely don't want to do though is um add salt to the inside and sort of work it into the burger because that's literally how you make um sausage and we're not making sausage we're making hamburgers you make so you know sausage is meat plus salt basically meat salt and effort and that's about it and so if you were to add salt to your hamburger and i'll link to a video where i demonstrate this but if you were to add salt or hamburger meat before forming the patties they come out super sort of springy and tough all right so i got my burger going so normally i would recommend like a really light um hamburger bun um but of course there are different styles of burgers and that was actually one of the things i liked most about the old jack and julia episode is that they both make completely different styles of burger um so where julia does a sort of classic you know diner style kind of thin thin burger that's on a soft bun jack does this larger juicier burger and what i really love is that he is the first to say that there's no you know right way or wrong way to do it it's just a matter of preference it's not that one is better than the other it's just a matter of preference that's sort of a running theme in his work you know there's a lot of there's a lot of chefs who went through very tough periods when they were younger i mean if you've read his book um the apprentice you'd know that he had a very tough life um in kitchens um you know worked through the classic brigade system so you know worked his way up and there's a lot of people who went through that process who see it as sort of a badge of honor and think themselves hey like i went through this abuse and so now you know now i'm in a position where i can lay it on to other people whereas people like papan he's he's always been the hey i went through this abuse and did it did was that abuse necessary in making me a better chef and i think he realizes the answer is no um and so rather than you know taking away that lesson from from from the uh you know the the hardships he had as a young cook rather than taking away the lesson that those hardships are good because they built him into the chef he is today um he comes with it from the opposite approach um where he says you know everybody started somewhere there's there's not nobody was born knowing how to make a hamburger so even something as simple as a hamburger he'll never sort of talk down to you while he's teaching you how to make it because not everyone knows how to make a hamburger so onion lettuce tomato you can do whatever you like so jacques papan insists that he does he does onion lettuce tomato and ketchup i personally do not like ketchup on my burger so i'm not going to use it i'm going to instead go with the julia approach which is just mayonnaise i'm gonna give this burger a couple flips now a lot of burger recipes will um especially i find you know from from non-american sources so if you look at like a british chef's burger recipe frequently they will add you know worcestershire sauce or onions or parsley or whatever eggs to their burger um i think i i'm of the mind that a hamburger should not have that stuff added to it that when you add that stuff to me it kind of makes it taste like a meatloaf sandwich as opposed to a hamburger um and so i was actually very please please pleasantly surprised to find that you know jacques pan who's a chef and a european chef at that um follows the same sort of protocol um he right he uses gruyere cheese so that's what i'm going with today i think griot is a fine choice for a hamburger i would never turn down american but your hair works all right so i'm just going to toss that under the broiler to help the cheese help the cheese melt i'm gonna drop my bun in the bottom now this is the final trick that he does which i think um is great he takes a piece of garlic and once he has his toasted bread make sure the bread is nicely crusty and then he rubs it with garlic and this is something you would do for you know whether it's italian style bruschetta or if you're doing like um palm tomacat catalonian tomato bread same technique rubbing a clove of garlic all right now i'm going to start constructing iceberg lettuce which jacques also recommends and i can't agree more i think iceberg lettuce is great for hamburgers it has the crunch that you want and i don't know i mean people who say iceberg lettuce there's no flavor i don't know where you're getting your iceberg lettuce from but it has just has a different flavor than romaine but i find it to be you know sweet and crunchy and delicious um so of the sort of blander lettuces iceberg and romaine i find it actually to be tastier than romaine all right there's our burger big tomato slice season the tomato of course always seasoned tomato salt and pepper and just like jack did in his show he forgot to put the ketchup on the bottom i forgot to put the mayonnaise on the bottom i normally would put the mayonnaise on the bottom but i'm not this time cuppy mayo for me and i do like to put my toppings on the bottom as does he hm what i was going to say about shaq fifen is that when i was a line cook he came into my the restaurant i was working at once it's not my restaurant he came to the restaurant i was working at once um and the chef knowing that i was a huge fan um asked me at the end of the meal if i wanted to come out and talk with him and i was like is that allowed because he's like a guest at the restaurant i'm not i'm just a cook and he's like yeah like jack would um would absolutely be fine with you coming out to talk to him and so i went and i talked to him and he gave me you know he came back in with me into the kitchen to look at my station and he gave me advice on how to cook and he gave me advice on my career um and he i mean i was just a you know an 11 an hour minimum wage line cook um and he took out you know he took the time to come and talk to me which i thought was unbelievable um and over the years you know i've met him now several times over the years five or six times um he never remembers who i am of course because he has um he speaks with a lot of people every every year he meets a lot of people um but to me it's almost even more telling that he doesn't remember who i am and yet every time i've met him he has been nothing but supportive and kind um and nice and you know he's just like a born educator and to me you know something to admire and something to strive for all right just like he does i'm going to cut my burger in half so i can take a look looks good to me all right chocolate pans hamburger here we go oh you know what i did last thing i forgot to do because i'm used to seasoning my burgers before um i cook them i forgot to season them after which is what he recommends so salt a little salt a little pepper i'll get the other side in a second but let's let's take our bite of this one first huh shall we not your classic american cheeseburger by any sense but boy is it delicious all right guys gals non-binary pals thank you for watching now go and watch some jackpot right bye-bye

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 458,358

Rating: 4.9453759 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: DF6OOUDH9yU

Length: 11min 41sec (701 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ShinePale]

I just watched this. I still like his hamburger video outside his pub in SF better. Where the other guy (forget who) was throwing ground beef against a sheet pan.

[u/Aardvark1044]

Watched it at lunch while I ate something that wasn't a burger. Looks good but I think I'm going to stick with the smashburgers. Appreciate the kind words about Mr. Pepin, though - he's an absolute legend. Also, that tomato looked really really good.

[u/qutius]

What a great story about him meeting Pepin for the first time. With the smash burger craze in full effect, I haven’t had or made a “pub” burger like that in almost a year I think? Makes me want to check out a new (smashed of course) burger cart I see has opened recently a try tomorrow tho