This is a Tasty Burger | Kenji's Cooking Show

hey everyone it's kenji and today i'm going to show you how to cook some really coarsely ground hamburger so these burgers this comes from my friend uh my buddy jesse lindemann bacon dealer that's his little logo you saw him on my video for blts which i will link up here somewhere this is a mixture of 70 fresh prime beef and 30 percent uh dry 28 day dry aged beef so it's shoulder clawed prime shoulder clawed fresh with uh trim from new york strip and prime rib uh that's been dry aged for 28 days so if you'll notice about this burger the reason i wanted to feature this burger is because it is super coarsely ground it looks like it probably went through a quarter inch die just once and then it was very loosely packed um when you cook a burger that's coarse ground like this very fatty and very loosely packed it's sort of a fundamentally different thing from the more finely ground and more tightly packed stuff that you buy the supermarket or maybe that um you know depending on how you grind it yourself at home it might also be more tightly packed um so something like this if you try and put it on a grill it's going to be really difficult because it's going to fall apart you also don't want to really smash this because it doesn't bind the same way so the way i cook really coarse ground beef like this so first of all i get a cast iron skillet stainless steel skillet will work as well you don't want to use nonstick for this because it won't get hot enough and so a cast iron skillet that is just about the size of the burger a little bit bigger season salt and pepper and then in the skill i'm going to put just a little bit of oil not much just enough that i can get it going and the idea here is that with this much fat in there the burger is going to essentially render out and it's going to cook in its own juices so you don't really need to add much fat in there and the other good thing about this method is that uh it works well for sort of thinner patties so with a patty like this i don't really want it um especially with that much fat i don't really want it to be medium rare the way i'm the way i might want a thicker or leaner patty with this much fat i will actually want it to render and soften so i'm going to cook it probably to around medium or so but even with this method even that well done it's still going to be super super juicy because it's basically basting in its own fat um flavoring it and staying nice and moist for a burger like this i really want to taste the beef so i'm going to go with my sort of classic simple toppings a burger with onions pickles and american cheese that's what i that's sort of like the the pizza margarita of the burger world for me it's if i'm going to a new burger restaurant and i want to try i really want to get an eye for their quality and if they pay attention to the details and the quality of the meat um that's what i order i feel like a little bit of onion compliments the flavor of the beef a little pickle offsets that richness um american cheese essential because you want actually wanted cheese or at least i want a cheese that doesn't have a ton of flavor that's going to cover up the flavor of the beef i really want it there just for the textural element so oh and of course the cheapest softest squishiest hamburger bun you can find because you don't want that beef start squeezing out um if you don't happen to have a bacon dealer the way i do who can get you your ground beef you can grind it yourself um there's a couple options for that maybe i'll make a video about this one day but what i'll do is i'll link to um i'll link to an article in the description below uh on serious eats about how to grind your own beef at home there's a couple methods you can use a inexpensive hand crank grinder they're about 30 40 bucks on on amazon or restaurant supply store and those work really well especially for small amounts of meat you can also use a food processor and the way you do that is you would take your beef trim it so that there's no um connective tissue or silver skin anything like that um cut it into cubes and place them on a tray a metal tray and then place that tray in your freezer for just about 10 minutes and you want to start to sort of harden up around the edges but still be squishy and then you transfer that to a food processor about a half a half pound at a time is what a food processor can handle um and then pulse it about 20 25 times until it comes until it's ground that's a technique that i developed at um at cook's illustrated um i think the i don't even remember what the what the article was called it was 2008 or something like that um and in fact based on that article my old buddy brian roof and i who is now um a senior editor cooks illustrated i think he's a senior editor senior editor or hire i don't know deputy editor something some some high up guy cooks illustrated now um he and i back in 2008 were hoping to open up a burger joint um the i the concept was that we would um grind meat to order so we would have a butcher working there at all times with an open you know a butcher case with a window in it so that you could see the meat hanging and when you ordered a burger the meat would go through a grinder onto a um onto a specially designed tray and then straight into the griddle so the idea is that the burgers would be packed extraordinarily loosely so that nobody would ever nobody would ever even pick them up and pack them they would basically be ground into a special plate shaped roughly like that and then flip straight onto a griddle so that they stay really really nice and loose which is i think the ideal way to cook coarsely ground and freshly ground beef especially when it's really fatty like this because you get all these nice little sort of nooks and crannies and crispy bits oh yeah so you see you see all these little crispy bits around the edges that's where all that flavor is going to come from so we we we went through everything all the way up to um designing a logo and coming up with branding and all that and we had a full package and we were showing it around to potential investors and then um you know then the stock market sank in 2008 and nobody wanted to make restaurants anymore and so we stopped um but you know it's fine um my life would probably be very different right now if i had opened up a restaurant in 2008 and not necessarily for the better so it was a good lesson anyhow um onions on top of the burger like that is what i like to do some cheese on top there that bun is done um i'm not really a i'm not a i'm not a ketchup on burgers guy i am a mayo on burgers guy if you want to do ketchup by all means go for it um i just find that ketchup kind of covers up too much flavor i could i could i could deal with like a special sauce situation or with mustard but mayo is usually my go-to again store-bought nothing fancy we're gonna let the beef do all the work here these are the kosher dill pickles that we made in a video a few weeks back um i can also link to that one up here and as soon as the beef cheese is melted this is [Music] done and now i'm going to save this beef fat because i'm going to use it tonight to roast some potatoes all right and there we have a classic burger beautiful oh and drippy let's take this out over to the light huh oh man look at how gorgeous that looks all those crispy bits man bacon dealer knows his beef i got a beef with bacon dealer all right jesse my friend thank you for this burger and the rest of you guys gals and non-binary pals i will see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 711,296

Keywords:

Id: YO0DYsT7y-o

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Anti-Baby]

Who here has a hand cranked grinder they like? I have a cheap kitchenaid grinder attachment, and it works okay, but I am considering an upgrade.

Since I bought my grinder attachment they've come out with some better all-metal ones with bigger feeding trays and whatnot, but I am also interested in an old fashioned hand crank grinder.

[u/kwisque]

Looks great, I like the idea of putting onions on then cheese, my onions always fall all over the place. Also very comforting to see a professional chef use things like Helmann's mayo on burgers. I've made mayo at home (using Kenji's methods even) and to me it just doesn't seem worth the trouble.

Kenji's home videos remind me why I'll never make it back to California. He's way, way more successful than I am, and if that's the kitchen he can afford, I will never be able to live there with the kitchen I could afford.

[u/icehuck]

How does one get a bacon dealer?

[u/jondrethegiant]

Man this guy really does speak my language when it comes to food. Everything he did in this video is what I try to accomplish when making burgers. I actually adapted his steak prep method for making burgers in that I loosely shape my patties to keep the texture good and then I salt and pep them and put them on a metal rack to dry out in the fridge for a few hours or overnight (ideally). This simulates the dry-aged beef texture enough to accomplish the crusty exterior by reducing the moisture content on the surface. The other thing I do is the cheese. American cheese is my go to for burgers because of the melt factor and the mild taste to keep it from overwhelming the flavor of the meat.

Edit: As u/CheeseChickenTable pointed out, dry brine is bad for ground meats and should not be done on burgers. I am not recommending dry brine, but light salt and pepper. If you are worried about it, wait until right before cooking but I don’t have an issue with the texture as mentioned below.

[u/LuciferJonez]

My girlfriend is a vegetarian which pretty much makes me a vegetarian...

[u/[deleted]]

I always respected Kenji, but I think I just fell in love.

[u/fiddlefigtree]

I remembered he had a serious eats article about different options for grinding burger meat at home. The only one he didn’t mention was the hand chopped method which he preferred over the others at the time - https://aht.seriouseats.com/2011/04/the-burger-lab-whats-the-best-way-to-grind-beef.html

[u/omnilogical]

Does anyone know what he means about a nonstick skillet not getting hot enough? I understand that a nonstick isn't ideal because heat can't transfer into the food as efficiently, but is there something else about the temperature in the pan being different?

[u/DukeSpaghetti]

oh man I thought he wasnt wearing pants at first!