Everybody loves a burger, but there can be too much of a good thing.
From faulty cooking techniques to some questionable history,
we explore the biggest burger myths you probably believe and let you in on the real facts.
If you go to a fancy steakhouse for dinner and decide to get the burger, what does that burger
look like when it shows up at your table? It's probably an enormous patty, eight ounces at least,
cooked medium-rare on a grill and delicately balanced on a golden brioche bun.
Then, you pick it up and realize it's way too tall to fit in your mouth. You awkwardly take
a bite that's 90% bread and watch half the patty slide out the back of the sandwich,
covering your fingers in grease. You give up and eat the rest with a fork and knife.
A huge steakhouse-style burger is a fun indulgence every once in a while,
but there's no denying that the supersized patty throws everything out of whack.
Thick burgers are tough to eat, which is a big issue for a food that's designed to be handheld. A
burger isn't all about the beef, but instead works best when the patty harmonizes with toppings,
condiments, and bun to create something greater than the sum of its parts.
After all, if the beef patty was the main draw of a hamburger, we would all be eating them plain.
A thin patty allows for a multifaceted taste experience, with no one component of the sandwich
dominating another. Thin burgers don't fall apart into a soggy mess when you eat them, either.
Another thing you see at fancy burger places is burgers topped with expensive cheese. Now,
we agree that fine imported cheeses are wonderful on a cheese board where they can
be appreciated all on their own, but using them on a burger is oftentimes a waste. Not
only do pungent cheeses disturb the delicate balance of flavors in a well-crafted burger,
but they can lack the gooey, smooth, melty texture of an old-fashioned slice of American cheese.
The truth is that the cheapest American cheese, which, yes, we know is not technically cheese,
that’s available in your grocery store might help make a better burger than the more expensive,
name-brand varieties. In fact, some tests concluded that American cheese product,
which has so little cheese that it can't legally be labeled as cheese, performed better than
competitors that contained 100% cheese. Likewise, expensive organic brands fell to the bottom of the
rankings. It's reassuring to know that sometimes, the cheapest option really is the best one.
There's surely no more iconic symbol of summertime than a backyard barbecue, and for many people,
that also means throwing some burgers on the grill. Now, if you're a dedicated grillmaster,
you can relax. We're not going to argue that grilling is a bad way to cook a burger. Still, we
must admit that it has some downsides compared to cooking a burger on a pan or a flat top griddle.
The tastiest part of a burger is the crispy browned crust on the outside,
which is a product of the Maillard reaction.
Furthermore, charcoal grills produce deep browning, but they cook unevenly,
leaving some parts of your burger potentially gray and flabby instead of wonderfully charred
and crispy. A griddle or cast-iron pan heats more evenly across its entire surface,
consistently browning every inch of your patty.
Another advantage of cooking burgers indoors is that they will likely retain more moisture.
A griddle traps the juices that burgers release when cooking. That means there's
very little loss of flavor or juiciness during the cooking process. On a grill,
however, those juices drip through the grates and vaporize on the coals,
which can leave you with a dry, tasteless burger if you're not careful.
Proper seasoning is the foundation of all good food. And, generally speaking, food tastes the
most delicious if every component is well salted. That's why many people mix salt into
their burgers before forming patties. Seasoning burgers this way ensures that they are evenly
salted all the way through. However, pre-salting ground beef this way comes with a big downside.
Cook's Illustrated tested three techniques for seasoning burgers. In one, they mixed salt
throughout the patties. The second batch was left with salt sitting on the exterior of the
burgers for half an hour. The third batch wasn't salted until the moment before it hit the grill.
The third batch was by far the tastiest of the trio, with the second batch drying out
on the outside and the first batch coming out with an unnerving sausage-like texture.
So, what happened? Salt denatures the protein in ground meat,
changing the texture and making it bind together more tightly. This
is desirable in sausages like kielbasa and hot dogs where you want textural cohesion,
but it's off-putting in what should be a more loosely-textured burger. This means that,
for tender, melt-in-your-mouth burgers, you should wait until the last minute to apply salt.
Almost every burger recipe uses basically the same technique to cook burgers. Whether
you're grilling, griddling, or pan-searing, the instructions say to get your cooking surface
ripping hot so you can get a crust on your burger and cook it in the minimum amount of
time possible. But that technique may have more to do with capitalism than good eats.
Burgers took over America in the post-WWII era because of the efforts of fast food chains.
It makes sense that these quick-serve franchises would want burgers to cook as quickly as possible
because they were trying to serve hungry customers within minutes and make a profit.
"Mmmm.
Don't you just love it when you come back from the bathroom to find your food waiting for you?"
At home, where you have the luxury of time, you can take as long to cook your burger as
you would like. Some smoked burgers take over an hour to prepare, but the effort
rewards you with patties that taste more like barbecue brisket than anything you'd get from
a drive-through. If you want to think outside the burger box even further, you can try making
steamed burgers. Steaming burgers replaces the screaming-hot pan with a gentle steam bath,
a technique that produces a uniquely moist burger. Only one way to form a patty
Many burger myths revolve around the idea that there is a single ultimate type of
burger. They claim that the only burger you should bother making is a smash burger,
or a loosely-packed patty that barely stays together, or even a burger made out of some
very time-consuming hand-minced beef. In reality, proper patty making is a function
of what kind of burger you want to eat and how you're going to cook it. Some people say
that pressing down on a burger patty will dry it out, but that's an integral part of
the technique for smash burgers, which cook so quickly they tend to stay moist anyway.
Meanwhile, loosely-packed burgers create a beautiful craggy crust when seared in a pan,
but if you throw them on the grill they might fall apart and make a
serious mess. Hand-minced burgers are delicious, but they're a far
different experience than what most people are looking for when a burger craving strikes.
All of this is to say that burger patties come in a plethora of shapes and sizes,
and choosing only one technique would rob us of other worthwhile burger experiences.
You should feel free to make your burgers however you want, perhaps with an eye to your
particular craving or cooking method. The only limit is your imagination.
A bun is one of the things that helps to truly define a hamburger. Humans have been
eating ground beef patties for a long time, but the innovation that changed the Salisbury steak
into a modern burger was putting it on two pieces of bread. As time has progressed, the definition
of a burger has grown to encompass a universe of traditional toppings and cooking techniques.
You can, of course, consider relatively healthy bun substitutes if you're watching
your carbohydrate intake, like the classic lettuce "bun." Not all bun substitutions
need to be about health, however. If you want to make an alternative-bun burger
try making buns out of toasted ramen noodles. The options for replacing buns are almost limitless.
This is perhaps the world's most pervasive burger myth. Scores of sources will typically say that
you will ruin your burgers if you flip them more than once. Reasons for this recommendation vary,
with some cooks claiming that excessive turning inhibits the formation of a browned
crust and others warning that burgers will stick if flipped prematurely. While certain
types of burgers benefit from a single flip, particularly thin ones like smash burgers,
other varieties of burgers turn out better if you flip them more frequently while cooking.
Tireless burger myth debunker J. Kenji Lopez-Alt tested this out and ruled decisively in favor of
flipping burgers frequently. His experiment concluded that large burgers cooked in a pan
benefit from flipping constantly, with the best results coming from flipping every 15 seconds.
All told, frequent rotation browned the burgers much more evenly than flipping only once. The
inside cooked more evenly too, with almost no overcooked meat in the interior of the patty.
The interior of the one-flip burgers, by contrast, featured a ring of dry meat on
the outside and a slightly underdone center, which is generally a bad idea when you're
dealing with ground meat. Hopefully, this information will help you the next time
a burger know-it-all shames you for touching your patties too much at a backyard barbecue.
The fast food cheeseburger is the ultimate symbol of cheap decadence,
a calorie bomb that will make you gain weight and lead you to an early grave.
Most burgers you encounter in the wild are indeed patently unhealthy.
"Don't sell me, Ed. Please!" "I want to stay here with you!!" "We love you, Ed!"
But burgers can be a part of a healthy diet. If you prepare them in the right way.
Pat LaFrieda has debunked the unhealthy burger myth. LaFrieda, who supplies beef to many of
America's most expensive restaurants, says that his professional bodybuilder friends eat
a ton of burgers without it necessarily affecting their health. He notes that depending on the cut,
beef can have a fat content under 5%. Even with fattier ground beef,
a large percentage of that fat melts away while the burgers cook. As long as you stay away from
relatively high-fat condiments like mayo, bacon, and cheese, a burger can qualify as lean protein.
Beef can be a beneficial part of a nutritious diet, especially for people with active
lifestyles or those at risk of anemia. It's an excellent source of complete protein and
is high in nutrients like iron, niacin, zinc, and vitamin B12. It also contains creatine,
which may help build muscle strength. No wonder bodybuilders can't get enough of the stuff!
Burgers are an almost perfect food, but they have one fatal flaw: that flimsy bottom bun. Who
among us has not cried in anguish as the bottom bun of our burgers turned into a sodden mess,
soiling our fingers with grease and leaked condiments? Whoever decided that
burger buns should be split approximately one-third of the way up the bun has a lot
to answer for. However, if you're willing to view burgers from another perspective,
that frustrating asymmetrical split can actually be used to your advantage.
Your burger wrongs can be righted if you simply flip your burger upside down. That way, the large
top bun soaks up most of the juice while the thinner bottom portion stays dry and intact. For
an even tidier eating experience, wait a minute before eating your burger to allow the juices to
settle and redistribute. Eating your burger upside down involves a little touch of courage, as you're
risking ridicule for breaking traditional burger norms. But once your friends and family see how
clean your hands are after eating an inverted burger, they'll be sold on the technique too.
Veggie burgers don't have a great reputation.
"It's a...veggie burger." Teddy: "It's a what? A veggie burger?!
Why would you do that? Oh! Why? Oh!"
It's hard to engineer a plant-based food to be as primally satisfying as beef. In the past, many
of us attempting to have a meat-free burger have had to suffer through mushy and dense black bean,
grain, or soy-based burgers that just made us wish we were eating real cow. Fortunately,
we live in the future now, and fake meat technology has progressed at an astounding rate.
Two manufacturers make plant-based burger meat that can actually satisfy your burger cravings.
For many, the Impossible Burger from Impossible Foods resembles beef so closely that it's almost
uncanny. It looks like raw meat and indeed "bleeds" and renders fat a lot like real beef
does. It also has a similar nutritional profile to beef and is the only meat substitute that
might fool you into thinking it was real. Beyond Meat's plant-based Beyond Beef is
another passable burger substitute, but it doesn't mimic the real thing quite as well.
Still, with either of these products, you can give yourself a plant-based burger without
sacrificing much of the taste and richness you have come to expect from a beef burger.
Louis' Lunch is a leading restaurant in the history of the hamburger in America. Founded
in 1895, the New Haven, Connecticut restaurant claims to have invented
the hamburger sandwich in 1900 when a customer asked for a handheld lunch.
The restaurant's long history might qualify it as America's oldest continually-running burger place,
but its claim to being the originator of the burger has been thoroughly debunked.
The New Haven Register discovered that there are several references
to hamburger sandwiches in American newspapers from 1894,
one year before Louis' Lunch was founded and six years before they claim to have
invented the hamburger. The first was an ad for burgers at Barny's Saloon from the Shiner,
Texas Gazette. Later in that same year, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune
both wrote articles about nightlife characters eating burgers from carts on the street.
So who invented the burger? It's impossible to tell. These three mentions from the same year are
spread all over the country, indicating that the burger was already widespread well before 1894.
It's possible that innovators in separate regions invented the burger independently from each other.
They might also have been riffing on a far older idea for minced meat dishes
that stems all the way back to 1st-century Rome. What we do know is that burgers were
available from coast to coast by the time Louis' Lunch "invented" them in 1900.
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