- A burger's very, very good at our restaurant.
But, it's not perfect.
- So, we're gonna head down to the restaurant,
we're gonna cook a bunch of burgers,
make ourselves sick, and see if we come up with what,
for us, is the ideal Meat Hook burger.
- They have beer too!
- Also they have a lot of beer,
so we're gonna drink some of those.
(light music)
I have a lot of thoughts about the dry-aged burger.
Number one it's (bleep) amazing,
it's my favorite burger full stop right now.
- We have the best possible product already.
Like, do as little to it as possible.
- Don't (bleep) it up.
- Yeah, don't (bleep) it up.
That's it, that's my job.
"Don't (bleep) up."
- What do we want to come away with here?
What's our goal for the day?
Classic burger and keep it like no sauce,
just a burger with few vegetables on the side?
Or do we want to try and come up
with a sauce for this thing?
- I want sauce and I want pickles.
Those are the things that, I think that vinegar
balance is something that I always want on my burger.
- For me, it's several things, like
I want to add more cheese.
We're dealing with a dry-aged burger so
let's add moisture through dairy and
see what other things we can do.
- I feel like we should be serving one burger that
comes dressed completely as-is, is like
our ideal of perfection.
(light blues music)
- What we are going to start with is what makes
a dry-aged burger, a dry-aged burger.
This a strip loin beef that we got today.
To make it actually dry-aged, we want to
hold onto it for at least, I'd say, 28 to 45 days.
- 28 days is where you start to really, really
see a difference, both in flavor and texture.
The reason you want a dry-aged steak,
specifically when you come to a place that's
grass-fed/grass-finished, those animals are out on pasture;
They are building muscle, they're running around.
This means that muscle is more dense,
so what we want to do, after that
animal goes through the slaughter process,
is allow for those muscle fibers that are
really tightly, tightly wound to become more
loosely wound which makes a) the steak more tender and
b) helps some of that water that's in the muscle
really drain out, so you not only get a more tender steak,
but you get a more beefy flavored steak.
Now, on this side you have a beautiful New York strip,
but then you're left with this right here;
This is an uneven cut, as you can see,
so you can't really put it in a case.
We take all of this and we grind it,
and we turn it into a burger.
The blend itself, what we start with are like bare bones,
what we grind here at the shop,
Brent and I both really, really love
and our customers love as well.
It's about the most funky, dry-aged steak I think
you can find around because it's grass-fed which
makes it a lot different from most other burgers,
then it's got this dry-age and we're grinding
all of this stuff.
Cool with it going a little bit heavier on
fat for dry-aged 'cause it means more flavor.
(driving jazz music)
- The dry-aged burger with the marbling is totally
different, you see it's a different patty.
We typically just do it dry.
I don't like to give it too much flavor to the buns.
I don't really want anything to mess
with the flavor of the burgers-
so like grilled and brioche buns,
those are all cool and everything,
but the bland aspect is important when you're having
something super flavorful- so I'm trying
not to mess with that too much.
Because of the lower moisture content,
generally you have to cook it faster.
There's less of a window for success.
You have less time.
Where pick up time on our regular burger is
like six-seven minutes, pick up time on a dry-aged is
anywhere from a minute for rare to
like a minute and a half for medium rare.
- So you just want to get all of our toppings ready.
- [Ben] Sounds good.
- Cool.
- Sauce and sauce and sauce and sauce.
- [Kyle] Basically I just have some 'nduja sausage, a
Calabrian sausage, and I'm gonna mix it up with butter,
maybe a little flour, see how it comes out.
I don't think it's gonna stay emulsified,
but it's definitely gonna be really spicy.
So we'll see how it goes.
(light jazz music)
- [Brent] You're going straight squeeze bottle,
you know it's going on something?
- Oh, it's going on everything.
There's only about two ounces, so...
- Did you taste it?
- No.
(laughing)
Oh yeah, that's gross.
(laughing)
Yeah, I think I knew before I said it that
it was a really bad idea.
- Now we know.
- I had to try it.
- Now we know.
- What are you going for?
- The spiciest classic special sauce out there:
pickles, mayo, mustard, onion, that's it.
- [Ben] What did you add that got it spicy?
- There's just way more dijon and pickled red onion.
- I got ketchup, fish sauce, roasted onions-
did I already say fish sauce?
- Yep.
- I added more.
- There's more.
- I added more and a little bit of Worcestershire.
- And I just went super classic and just made an
onion sauce sous-vide, kinda thick so it's spreadable,
out of brown butter and shallots.
(jazz music)
- And we have our dear friend, Anna,
who runs our brewery here at Threes.
Please be as biased or unbiased as you want.
So starting from left to right, we'll start with that one.
What do you think? You can take another bite.
- This one was the one that I was the least excited by.
- Okay. Okay.
- This would be my least favorite.
- Okay. Least favorite. Heard.
Heard. Least favorite.
(laughing)
- Tastes like the ocean, but I don't really want
the ocean on my burger unless it's an ocean burger.
- All of the crazy (bleep) umami is almost completely lost.
Classic special sauce, only with a (bleep) load
of dijon in it, so it's extra spicy.
I thought it was fine. I thought it was totally fine.
I liked that I made it stronger than it needed to be.
That dijon held up to the dry-age,
but nothing else really did.
- Love spicy, love dijon.
- I honestly thought it was the best one.
That's brown butter onion sous-vide.
- [Ben] This was my favorite.
- This on it's own is very, very mild,
but I think it's the only thing that actually
elevated the flavor of the actual beef.
- I loved it.
- Yeah?
- Yeah.
I'd say one thing that's abundantly clear is that this is
not easy and, just because you have strong sauce,
doesn't mean it's actually gonna work well with the protein,
especially on a burger.
Way different then I thought it was going to work out.
Let's vote cheese.
- Thanks, guys.
- Anna, thank you for joining us for this round.
- I wish I could stay for the rest.
- It was lovely to here you trash my sauces.
- Great choices. Great palate!
Great palate!
(driving bass riff)
- The question really is, how much
cheese is too much cheese?
- So for the cheese we went double raclette,
so almost an ounce of raclette, folded over both halves,
which is a lot of really funky cheese.
This side is the double American dry-aged.
Well, actually, we doubled up on both patties,
so it's a quadruple American dry-aged.
(laughing)
- Alright, cool.
- Get in there.
- [Kyle] That is pretty f-ing good.
- That is very, very good.
- That is really good.
The cheese is sweet from the fat.
It's weird. It's good.
- I really do just love that sous-vide on that so much.
I like that a lot.
It could use just a hair more salt,
but I like the cheese with that.
- Yeah, I think when you add more fat,
you gotta salt it more.
- That's the thing, I think it needs some sort of acid to it
whether it be pickled red onions or some regular dill
pickles, something pretty acidic because it is,
like you said, an ounce of raclette cheese on two burger
patties that are 35% fat and 65% lean.
That's a lot of fat happening right there.
- [Ben] That's significantly better.
- Yeah.
- I really like the raclette, I think it really makes a
difference from the original dry-aged that we had,
but, obviously, it's also much lighter than four
slices of American cheese.
- This brings out the actual flavor of the meat way more
and, yes, it's ridiculously indulgent, but it's cleaner.
- I don't really need the dill pickles,
the pickled red onions with a little bit more bite and
sweetness to it is fantastic with that burger.
- So, I'd say, we have a winner for our dry-aged with
the raclette, sous-vide, and pickles.
I think that's the perfect way to have it.
I don't know how the burger would get much better than that.
- [Kyle] This is an improvement upon the way that we have
been serving it in just that we're kind of forcing people to
put that acid on there and that's gonna break up
the fat a little and make it taste even better.
- This was really awesome.
Thank you for taking the time for us to actually
workshop this and sit around and talk about it.
It was fantastic.
- Cool, burgers.
- [Brent] It's so good.
- [Kyle] So good.
- [Ben] Yeah, who knew?
- For more episodes like this, click here!
- [Offscreen] This is the brune landaise.
- [Ben] The lazy French one.
- [Offscreen] Yes.
(light music)