Here is my ideal burger. Brioche bun, garlic miso mayo, perfectly cooked medium rare patty
dripping with melted cheddar, tomato, pickled red onion, and the bun. I snuck in some lettuce
just for the picture. Lettuce in burgers doesn’t do anything for me. And it all needs to be
tiny so that I can comfortably hold it and eat it.
This video is for people that like their burgers medium-rare. I have nothing against well-done
burgers. Some styles of burgers taste great well-done. For example, you could make a meatloaf
mixture and shape it into burgers. Or you could make very thin smash burgers, but the
kind of burger I am making today doesn’t work beyond medium.
If you want to warn me and all my viewers about the dangers of medium-rare burgers,
I have a better project for you. Find a biking channel and warn the people about the danger
of riding a bike. You see, way more people die from biking than from medium-rare burgers
and if you want to save lives, I just wanted to put your energy to good use.
You know how my videos go. There is the theory and then there is the recipe. If you want
to jump directly to the recipe, the time stamps are in the description below.
Grinding beef yourself can take the tiny risk of e.coli and reduce it further. If you dunk
the chunk of beef into the boiling water for a minute before grinding, you can eliminate
the risk all together. So safety wise, there are some benefits. But will your burgers taste
any better? Not necessarily. They might even taste worse. I used to grind my own meat and
found the results inconsistent. When you need a small quantity, it’s hard to control the
fat content. Just think about it. You aren’t buying the whole cow shoulder. You are buying
a couple of pounds. Some of those pieces will have more fat and some will have less. I found
it’s also harder to get a perfect texture if you don’t do it regularly. Personally,
I found it not worth the hassle at all.
I buy my ground beef at Whole Foods. I like the loose beef in their butcher case that
the stores grind themselves, not the vacuum sealed packages from various brands of beef
producers that they carry. I don’t want to upset any Whole Foods lawyers, so just
to be clear, Whole Foods does not approve of medium-rare burgers and they are in NO
way assiciated with my channel.
I don’t know what they do, but their 80/20 ground beef makes the best burgers. I’ve
tried the Whole Foods ground beef from several locations in Boston. I’ve tried it from
a store in Colorado while visiting my brother. It’s always perfect. If you can’t find
80/20, 85/15 will work too, but any leaner than that is a lost cause. Burgers need fat.
If you want less fat, eat less burgers.
I used to think that any high end store would sell tasty ground beef, but that doesn’t
seem to be the case. Wegman’s is my first choice for steaks, but I don’t like their
ground beef. It always tastes dence and grizzly compared to Whole Foods. So try a few stores
in your area to see what you like.
If I am using the ground beef for burgers, I try to do that within 24 hours after buying
it to reduce the risk of bacteria growth.
Burger doneness is notorious difficult even for experienced restaurant cooks. The most
reliable method I found for thick burgers is reverse sear. Kenji Alt popularized this
fabulous method for steaks, and with a few modifications it works for burgers too. If
you want to understand why reverse sear works so well, check out my steak video in the description
below.
Here are the modifications we’ll need to get it to work for the burgers. Burgers are
thinner than the ideal thickness for reverse sear, so I use a lower temperature of 200
instead of 250. Burgers don’t brown as quickly as a solid muscle, so I use my grilling glaze
to help them. And finally, burgers are impossible to test with a thermometer. You can certainly
stick it in, but the reading you’ll get won’t be reliable because they are so thin.
This means that you’ll have to play with the timing a little. We all have different
ovens and different skillets, so keep notes and don’t serve burgers for a party of 8
until you get your timing down. The good news is that you are in complete control of your
burger size and thickness. Each steak is different, so a thermometer with a steak is a must. But
there is nothing to prevent you from shaping your burgers the same every time, so once
you get this technique down, it will always work.
Keep in mind that these burgers are medium-rare through and through, which means way more
tenderness and juiciness. If you are used to your burgers cooked unevenly, you might
be shocked by so much pink. Doneness is not about the color, it’s about the texture.
Texture wise, they taste more cooked than what I sometimes get in the restaurants where
the outside is gray brown, but the inside is cold and pasty.
Although I am a huge fan of pre-salting my proteins in advance to increase their juiciness,
burgers are an exception. Salting the burger ahead or even mixing the salt into the beef
will give you the texture of sausage -- very juicy, but not very tender. The longer the
salt sits on the meat, the more snappy and bouncy the texture will get. I don’t like
that in a burger, so I salt my burgers after the oven step and right before they go into
the skillet.
Let me know if this experience sounds familiar. You get a burger in a restaurant and the first
3 bites are glorious. Then the bottom bun starts to get too soggy, then everything starts
to fall apart, and by the end it’s a sad mess with a patty that tastes like a squeezed
out sponge.
Biting into a burger releases a gush of juice. The more bites it takes to finish the burger,
the worse it gets. That’s why my ideal burger is only 4 oz -- that’s small enough to fit
a slider bun. I’d rather have 2 little burgers than 1 big one.
Obviously the basic principle of this dish will work if you want a bigger burger, but
you’ll need a longer oven time even if the burgers are the same thickness as mine.
How you brown the burgers before serving is up to you. You can sear them in the skillet
or grill them. Knowing your heat source and how it will behave is crucial here. Keep in
mind that this method is not exactly like sous-vide. The oven only gets us started.
It does not get the burger to its final temperature. What gets us to our final doneness is the
sear and the rest. It should take 60 to 90 seconds per side to get good browning. If
your burger is black after 30 seconds, the inside will come out too rare and if it’s
pale after 2 minutes, the inside will come out too well done.
If using a skillet, be aware that ground meat will stick in stainless steel, so either use
teflon or cast iron.
If you watch this channel, you probably know about my grilling glaze. It produces way faster
and way tastier browning. Ground beef is not the easiest thing to brown because unlike
a solid muscle, it’s hard to dry it well and moisture slows down browning. That’s
where this glaze comes in. Look at the difference it can make.
Obviously, that was a chicken breast, not a burger, but the same applies to any protein
you put it on.
Melting the cheese while the burgers are in the skillet or on the grill can produce very
inconsistent results. My browning step is way shorter than in the traditional methods,
and it’s very easy to end up with a situation where your burger is brown, but the cheese
isn’t melted. That’s why I melt the cheese under the broiler. One of my kids doesn’t
like cheese, and I noticed that their burger always came out a tad undercooked. So now,
I put all burgers under the broiler for a minute in the end whether they get cheese
or top or not.
Now that we know the theory, let’s do it.
Normally, I prep all my accompaniments while the burgers are in the oven, but that’s
because I don’t need to stop and check the recipe. If this is your first time, I would
have everything ready before cooking the burgers.
Put all the grilling glaze ingredients into a squeeze bottle and shake them really well.
Or put everything into a bowl except for the oil and mix well, then slowly add the oil,
like making a vinaigrette. Since the burgers are so fatty, I use less oil in the glaze
than I do for something like fish and veggies. The amount of glaze you’ll need for the
burgers is tiny, but I prefer to make a good size batch and keep it in the fridge for all
my browning needs.
For the miso mayo, put 90g of mayo into a bowl, add 1 garlic clove grated on a microplane
zester, 2 tsp of white miso, a squirt of lemon juice, ½ tsp of Dijon mustard, and mix everything
until smooth. Everything in this sauce is optional and the measurements aren’t important.
If you don’t like or don’t have one of the ingredients, don’t worry about it.
Slice a red onion very thinly across the grain. Splash it very heavily with red wine vinegar
and sprinkled with lots of salt. Most of the salt will be left in the vinegar and the juice
that the onions will release, so don’t be afraid to salt like crazy.
As much as I love caramelized onions, I think the pickled onions are better on a burger
because they provide more contrast.
For the buns, I like a medium-fat brioche that has some substance to it. You don’t
want the richest fluffiest buns since they won’t stand up to all those burger juices.
We have a bakery in Boston, called Iggy’s, that bakes fabulous brioche buns in all different
sizes including tiny buns for sliders. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find their slider buns yesterday,
so I ended up buying their pull apart dinner rolls. If your buns are a tad too thick and
threaten to overshadow your burger, you can slim them down by cutting out a bit out of
the middle. There. That’s better.
Let’s slice some tomatoes and cheese and we have all our ducks in a row.
Preheat the oven to 200F.
Line a shallow baking sheet with foil for easy clean up. Place a flat rack on top. The
rack is crucial for air circulation. This technique won’t work without it. To reduce
sticking, rub the rack with a little oil, though I normally forget to do that.
Divide the ground beef into 4 oz portions. Doing it by eye is very error prone, so I
suggest you weigh. Shape the portions into patties by cupping them with your hand and
gently flattening out and rotating. Try to avoid the flying saucer shape. You don’t
want the middle to be any taller than the outside. Place them on a dry butcher paper
(or some other flat surface), and flatten them out gently. I usually use a pastry scraper,
but any flat thing works. I aim for the final thickness to be just short of an inch.
Place the patties on the rack and put in the middle of the oven for 20 minutes.
A couple of minutes before getting the burgers out of the oven, toast the buns. Set a non-stick
or cast iron skillet over medium heat. Add a little bit of butter and toast the bottoms
of the buns. Brioche browns very fast, so watch out.
Add a bit more butter and toast the top buns.
Then wipe out the pan with a paper towel.
When you get your burgers out of the oven, they will feel warm, but completely raw. That’s
normal. Dislodge them with a spatula. Careful. They are very soft.
Start preheating your skillet. Non-stick will preheat way faster and more evenly than cast
iron. You know your stove and cookware best. So do whatever it takes to get steady and
even browning. While the pan is preheating, season the burgers. Shake or wisk the grilling
glaze really well and put a tiny dollop on each burger. About a quarter of a teaspoon.
Gently spread it on the surface of the burgers and then sprinkle them with a mixture of salt
and pepper. Be very generous because a lot of it will fall off. Keep in mind that the
burgers are completely unseasoned inside, so you really need to go to town with salt
here. Flip the burgers over very carefully. Add another tiny dollop of glaze. Spread it
out and sprinkle on the salt. When you salt the top and the bottom of the patties, pretty
much nothing lands on the sides and that’s not good. I like to eat the sides, that’s
why I salt them.
Put a couple of teaspoons of high heat oil, like canola into the pan and swirl to coat
the bottom.
Add the burgers and cook until brown, about a minute. A timer is a good idea. Most people
are terrible at judging what a minute feels like.
While they are browning, set the rack of your oven as close to the broiling element as possible
and replace the foil in your pan with a clean foil. Flip the burgers and cook until brown.
This will take another minute or so. Place the burgers back in the baking sheet, but
this time directly on the clean foil, no rack. Top with cheese (or leave the cheese off if
you don’t want it). My favorite cheese for burgers is Cabot Seriously Sharp. Place the
burgers under the broiler just until the cheese melts, about a minute.
Spread the miso mayo on the bun. This gives you an umami boost and also protects the bun
from getting completely soggy. Add the burger, a slice of tomato. I like to eat my tomatoes,
that’s why I salt them. The pickled onions, and the top bun spread with a tiny bit more
of that miso mayo. It usually takes about 5 minutes to get all the burgers assembled,
which is a perfect time for them to rest. But if you are only making 2 burgers and put
them together very quickly. Give them 5 minutes to rest anyway so that the temperature of
the meat can even out.
Please don’t cut your burgers in half. These are small enough that they are comfortable
to hold. The only reason I cut them in half is to show you the inside.
A few tips on troubleshooting.
Problem 1: My burgers are too rare All ovens are different, especially when we
are talking about temperature extremes like 200F. Anything between 200 and 250F could
work, so play with the temperature and time until you like the doneness. Also, make sure
you aren’t shaping them too thick. An inch is a tad too thick, so make sure they are
under and inch.
Problem 2: My burgers are too well done The few times I heard about the problem of
overcooking with this method, it was due to the skillet or the grill not being hot enough.
If you can’t get both sides browned quickly, take the burgers off the heat even if the
second side is less than brown, and next time, preheat your skillet or grill longer.
Problem 3: Not ready to sear If you fall slightly behind with your toppings
prep, don’t panic. You can keep the burgers in the oven for an extra 5 minutes to buy
yourself some time. The temperature is so low, that 5 minutes won’t make much difference.
Problem 4: Scaling the Recipe How many burgers you are cooking will make
a difference in how done they’ll be. This burger was cooked with 6 patties on the baking
sheet and this one was cooked with 2 patties, so it came out a tad more done. Both were
wonderfully tasty, but it is something to keep in mind. If you did all your testing
on 2 burgers and then cooked 12 of them for a party, you might need a longer oven time.
Also be conscious about how to place them on a baking sheet. I usually make 6 on a quarter
sheet, so that’s what my recipe is optimized for. If you are making lots of them, make
sure to stagger them the way you would stagger cookies for even heating.
If I was learning this technique, I would buy a couple of pounds of beef and experiment
with the patty component until you are happy with the doneness.
Now you know the theory and the recipe. Add a pinch of practice and you’ll be a burger
master in no time.
Here are more very detailed culinary tutorials for you to check out and link to my classes
is in the description below.