- Hi, guys, I'm Matt and welcome to Tasty's Hack or Hassle.
On this show, Tasty producers attempt to make
their favorite dishes using a bunch of hacks
as collected by our friend, Annie.
I love burgers, so I'm very curious to see
how these hacks are going to change the overall outcome
and the flavor of our burgers.
(gentle instrumental music)
This is your classic American cheeseburger.
To me, it is the perfect food.
Super simple but always extremely satisfying.
But you know what, I'm curious to see how our hacks
will reshape how I make burgers.
(lively instrumental music)
Let's get started on making our patty.
Now, the first hack Annie gave me
is to use multiple types of meat in your burger
rather than just one.
I'm using a blend of sirloin, chuck and short rib.
And this is just gonna add a lot of nice flavor.
It's gonna allow me to sort of dial in
exactly what I wanna taste.
If I want it more beefy, if I want it more fatty.
Whatever blend you want,
you can dial it into however you want it to taste.
The next hack is to actually add baking soda
to the meat mixture.
This is supposed to help it brown.
It's supposed to kind of kickstart that Maillard reaction.
I don't usually have an issue with my burgers browning,
so I'm curious to see if this makes them brown on steroids,
or if it's just gonna look kind of the same.
And it's really important with burgers to not overmix.
You don't wanna break down all the fat.
You don't wanna make them too dense either.
This next hack is wetting your hands with cold water
to prevent the patties from sticking,
so you can shape the ultimate patty.
As long as you're not working with the beef for too long,
it shouldn't really stick to your hands.
I think it starts to stick
when it kind of melts and warms up.
I think this is easy to get around but we'll see.
So this looks nice to me.
I don't wanna work with it too much,
I don't wanna overwork my beef.
But I have to say,
there's like nothing stuck to my hands right now.
Look at that.
Before I set this down,
there's one more little hack that I wanna try.
So it's basically the thumb technique.
I'm just gonna take my thumb,
and make a little divot in the middle.
And the idea is that when the burger is cooking,
it's gonna start to get tight.
It's gonna start to form a ball almost.
This is gonna help it remain nice and flat,
and keep its shape a lot more.
This next hack actually involves
the lid of a jar of peanut butter.
So the idea is that you can use the lid
to help shape your patties.
What I am gonna thumbs down
is using the peanut butter jar lid itself.
It's kind of small.
This would work really, really well if say,
I was making a slider but for a burger,
it's a little bit petite.
So I'm actually going to set this aside.
And I'm gonna introduce my own hack.
So this is something I learned at a restaurant
I was working at years and years ago.
These are deli containers.
You'll get them a lot with takeout.
So the idea is that I'm going to use
these two containers to shape my patty.
And I'm just going to press it in there a little bit.
I don't wanna like force it in too much.
And then I'm just going to take the second lid,
press it down gently.
I don't wanna squish my beef too much.
And there you go.
Going to make a little divot in the top,
so my burger kind of bows out.
And here are the two patties.
I really, really like the deli container one.
It looks very uniform, the edge is super exact.
The hand-shaped one also looks great.
It looks very thick.
So I think both of these are gonna turn out pretty okay,
and I'm excited to see how they cook up.
The next hack is to actually pop these patties
in the fridge or freezer for about 20 to 30 minutes
just to kind of cool them.
I think the idea is that the cold is gonna help them
hold their shape a lot more while they're cooking.
If they're too warm, and if they're too melted,
they're just gonna fall apart.
But I'm very curious to see what the results are gonna be.
(gentle instrumental music)
My burger patties have been chilling in the fridge
for about 20 to 30 minutes.
Chilling it in the fridge has made it nice and firm.
It's holding its shape together really, really nicely.
It is time to start cooking our patties.
I have a cast iron pan here just heating up.
You can use non-stick, you can use whatever pans you have.
You can use a grill, but I'm going with cast iron.
I love cast iron, it retains heat really well.
This next hack involves adding mustard to our patties.
A lot of places actually do grilled mustard on their burgers
just to add a little bit more flavor
to zhoosh it a little bit.
Whoo, she's sizzling.
I can really smell the mustard.
It's in the air, it smells so good.
I'm very skeptical of this hack.
The idea is that you take chips of ice,
and you place them in the little divots you made
on the top of the burger.
I feel like if you don't overcook them,
they'll stay moist regardless of whether or not there's ice,
but let's see what happens.
The burgers have already been in the pan for a few minutes.
I don't know if having the cold burger patty
with the cold ice.
It doesn't seem to really be working.
It's not melting all that quickly.
And now it is time to flip my burgers.
I don't know if I love the way the mustard looks actually.
Maybe I applied it too thick.
Maybe it's supposed to be a super thin layer.
This next hack, don't press your burgers.
Don't flip them around too much, don't play with them.
I think that's pretty much a best practice
when you're cooking in general.
You want that Maillard reaction to really do its magic,
and to make things nice and crispy and caramelized.
One of the ways I like to gauge the doneness of burgers
is I check on the sides to see how far up the pink extends.
If I'm noticing it's starting to cook through nicely,
and there's not as much pink visible, I can usually assume
that it's the right doneness on the inside.
And so that's kind of my metric
for how I know when my burgers are done.
The next and sort of final cooking hack
is putting the cheese on while it's still in the pan,
so the residual heat from the pans helps it melt faster,
rather than throwing it on at the end,
and hoping it melts all the way on top.
I prefer American, I know some people are sticklers,
"Oh, it's technically not real cheese."
It melts like nothing else,
but you can use any cheese that you want.
And there we have it.
The cheese has melted nicely over the top.
It's kind of enrobed my burger a bit.
At this stage in the game,
I can see a couple of my hacks,
and how they've had an impact on everything.
They've retained their nice flat burger profile.
And I think a lot of that is due to that little divot
that we put in the inside
so it didn't sort of curl up on itself.
So again, another great hack
that's worked really, really well for these burgers.
Earlier, we added baking soda
to help the browning of the burgers.
So I just wanna take a look at the bottom here.
Oh wow, it looks like the baking soda worked,
but how much more did it work?
We'll check in on that later.
These burgers apparently need to rest for about 10 minutes
just to let the juices redistribute.
I think this is gonna work
because the best practice with all meat
is to let it rest for a few minutes afterwards.
And so these babies are just gonna chill for a bit,
and then we'll check them out.
(lively instrumental music)
Now, the bun is the most underrated,
and one of the most important parts of a burger,
so we have to get this right.
I have in front of me, a pretzel bun.
You can use whatever bun you want for this.
What's important is that you have a whole bun.
So we are going to take our bun and just slice through it.
And before we go all the way through, we're gonna stop.
So basically, we have a little hinge on the end here.
And this is to A, hold our bun together.
It's also gonna create an edge
where not all of our toppings are going to spill out.
At least I think that's the point of it.
Shake Shack does this on their burgers,
so I'm very curious to see how it works here.
Now, every great burger has a toasted bun.
To me, that's a fact.
We're going to be trying to cook our buns
in the leftover fat and juices that are in the pan.
I'm just gonna take a little paper towel here,
and just use it to dab up a lot of that excess fat.
It's nice and heated it up.
I'm just gonna take my bun, plop her in there.
And before I finish, I just wanna turn it around.
I wanna make sure that I get every little bit
coated with that beef fat.
And I'm just gonna let this sit.
You can even see it sizzling just along the outside there.
All right, and time for the grand reveal.
I don't know about you, that's looks pretty nice to me.
Cooking in your leftover beef fat,
I think works beautifully.
You don't have to, obviously, you can toast your buns
in butter or oil, whatever you want.
But we wanna use everything.
And now that my bun is toasted and my patties are seared,
it's time to assemble a burger.
And now it is time for our final hack,
and that is how to properly assemble a burger.
Now, this particular hack involves
putting our condiments on the bottom.
Your bottom bun is less likely to get soggy.
And the idea is that the mayo is super, super fatty.
And so what that's gonna do is that's gonna create
almost like a waterproof little layer on the bottom.
And I'm just going to repeat with my ketchup.
And now I'm just gonna take my lettuce.
This lettuce creates a waterproof barrier
so that our burger juices don't get down into the patty.
Two nice slices of tomato.
And now finally, star of our show, our burger patty.
There we go, my top bun is now completely separated
from the bottom bun.
I think that really has to do
with just the thickness of the burger.
If you were making a thin smashburger,
this would work a lot better.
But because my burger is so thick, it doesn't really work,
so I'm not gonna suggest it for this particular style.
I for one am happy with how this looks,
but the real test is gonna come
when we compare it to our control burger.
(lively instrumental music)
And here it is, my hack burger.
Comparing them to each other, they certainly look different.
I think the most noticeable and most visual difference
I can see is my hacked burger is way darker
and way browner than my regular burger,
which I think is due to the baking soda
that we put in before.
Very surprising, I didn't expect it to be that different.
We gotta start with the regular one.
It's a good burger.
It's nice, it's flavorful.
I'm a little thrown by the untoasted bun.
I don't know if that's a thing on a lot of burgers,
or just in this case, but the lack of a crunch
is really, really standing out to me.
All right, my friend, let's see how you did.
Hm, this tastes very different.
The patty on this, there's something about it
that feels a little bit chewier almost,
and a little bit denser.
But it's so much darker everywhere than this burger.
Whereas the simplicity of the unhacked burger,
I almost wonder if the addition of the baking soda
made it too dark and made it change super radically.
I do think that the burger with my toppings underneath
has stayed together a lot better.
I think when they're on top here,
it kind of starts to run awry.
At the end of the day, I think putting toppings
on the bottom is kind of the way to go.
I think it's a nice workaround.
My grilled mustard, I can taste it,
but it's very, very subtle.
It's kind of like in the background.
I only notice it when I'm really, really looking for it.
I think if it was a thinner burger patty,
the mustard would read a lot better.
But because it's so thick,
it's just kind of overshadowed by everything.
Gonna have to go meh on it.
I think it really just depends
on the type of burger that you're making.
The hacked burger definitely has a nice beefy flavor to it.
I think a lot of that came from the combination
of meats that we used in the beginning.
But there's so much going on on this burger
that it kind of gets lost.
And I think at the end of the day,
simpler just kind of wins.
So I used a lot of hacks to make this burger,
which ones were my favorites?
One, wetting my hands to prevent the ground beef
from sticking worked really, really well.
I was very impressed with that.
Two, making the divot in for the thumb in the top
so that the burgers kept their shapes
while they were cooking.
And three, adding the toppings to the bottom,
I definitely think helped the burger stay together better
and just made it more structurally stable.
Let me know what burger hacks
you know of in the comments below.
And until next time, take care, my friends.
(lively instrumental music)