Hamburgers

[xcanuck]

The problem with these lovely steak chunks is that they don't hold together very well. We certainly lost some down into the grill. My solution, because we WILL TRY AGAIN WE WILL REBUILD!!!, would be to add a very tiny amount of breading (perhaps a couple of ground up ritz crackers for the whole batch), add another pre-ground meat (wonderful ground lamb at the dupont market), or make them ahead of time and leave them in the fridge overnight since today's leftovers held together much better.

It sounds like you're defeating the purpose of the experiment, which is to control the quality of meat that you're using and creating a burger with richer beef flavour. I think that by using things like binders and additional ground meat, you're "watering down" your burger. How cold was the meat that you started with? I think starting with colder meat will allow you to process the meat more and have less chance of the burger falling apart on the grill. Then you can do as Bittman suggests and have a burger that is nothing but 100% beef (with a lilttle S&P) and intense beef taste.

[Pat]

After reading the Bittman article (lovey is a huge Mark Bittman fan) we made the cuisinart burgers this weekend. A couple of points:

The cuisinart worked fine. Really. If you have a meat grinder, I'm assuming that you're recreating more or less what a butcher would do for you. The cuisinart gave us something different from those striated hamburger strings (I'm assuming that's what a meat grinder will turn out. If anyone wants to let me borrow one, I will totally make it worth your while.) What the cuisinart gives you are these handy little chunks that give the finished product an entirely novel texture and flavor. We used fatty sirloin, but I doubt it came from anywhere neck-like.

The grinder I use doesn't give long strings. It's a coarser grind (more or less depending on which way i have the cutting wheel installed). It takes very little handling to get burgers from it. There are fairly distinct pieces of meat but the burger holds together fine with no binder at all. Yesterday, I used pepper to season, with small amounts of worcestershire and hot sauce, and salted while cooking.

I might try the cuisinart to see how that goes.

[DanCole42]

4 minutes per side? For a cheap Weber grill, it would take a bonfire on our rig!

We do it with salt, pepper, finely chopped onion, Worcesteshire sauce. Two burgers, 15-20 briquettes, 15-20 minutes. Toasted bun. Very juicy.

I have a standard Weber kettle. 15-20 sounds like a long time. I'm definitely closer to the 5-minute mark. Are you cooking with the top on or off?

[MC Horoscope]

That's 15-20 minutes total, not per side, with the hood on. About 15-20 briquettes.

[DC in DC]

We were also inspired by the Bittman article. We used chuck and ground it in the Cuisinart (we don't have a meat grinder) with garlic, salt & pepper, and Worcesteshire sauce. Grilled for 3 minutes a side. We thought the result was decent, but not amazing. My husband (the one who prepped and cooked the burgers) thought our problems were: (1) maybe chuck wasn't the right cut of beef to use? It was pretty fatty and since we tried hard not to over-grind, there were a few pieces of fat that popped up throughout the burger; and (2) The beef wasn't ground up enough...a bit too chunky for our tastes. We didn't have problems with the burger holding together.

We may try this again since it was pretty low-effort.

[xcanuck]

We were also inspired by the Bittman article. We used chuck and ground it in the Cuisinart (we don't have a meat grinder) with garlic, salt & pepper, and Worcesteshire sauce. Grilled for 3 minutes a side. We thought the result was decent, but not amazing. My husband (the one who prepped and cooked the burgers) thought our problems were: (1) maybe chuck wasn't the right cut of beef to use? It was pretty fatty and since we tried hard not to over-grind, there were a few pieces of fat that popped up throughout the burger; and (2) The beef wasn't ground up enough...a bit too chunky for our tastes. We didn't have problems with the burger holding together.

We may try this again since it was pretty low-effort.

Personally, I think chuck is an excellent cut. Sounds like the meat wasn't ground up enough. I haven't tried it in a Cuisinart but maybe a few more spins might be warranted?

[DanCole42]

Anyone check out the latest edition of Cook's Illustrated? They have a great recipe for a classic burger using short ribs for fat and sirloin tip (or flank steak) for beef flavor. I made it this weekend and it was the best hamburger I've ever had (yet alone cooked myself!). I think I started crying. I picked up three pounds of sirloin tip and the appropriate ratio of short ribs yesterday at the American Flatbread One Year Anniversary farmer's market. Should be enough for about twenty burgers - I can't wait.

[mdt]

The NYT with an set of articles.

[edenman]

"Respect" is not wasting a single, juicy bite.

[ol_ironstomach]

There was a Gino's, which had the local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, but we didn't really eat there much. I'm not even sure if that had opened before Scotty's closed. They had burgers--the Gino Giant, I remember.

Our long, national nightmare is nearly over. The Gino's revival in Pennsylvania has announced plans to expand to Baltimore this year.

[DanCole42]

Here's my problem with the way a lot of "upscale" chefs/cooks do burgers: they treat them like steak. Meaning, they make a patty that's an inch thick or more, then sear it until medium rare (or seared and pan roasted).

This creates a center that's a lot closer to beef tartar than "hamburger." I have no problem with beef tartar, or any raw beef preparation - prepared right, they can be a singular luxury. But in order to prepare tartar properly, you need to properly season the beef. The reason this doesn't work in a hamburger is that, if you season ground beef and then toss, you end up seasoning the inside of the patty. Cooking ground beef that's essentially been seasoned from the inside out causes it to seize up and you end up with a rubbery burger (the salt denatures the proteins which then glue together in the heat). The alternative is to only season the outside, but then you end up with a flavorless tartar center if you have a thick burger.

A burger should be thin and cooked to the point where the outside goes from red to light brown to dark brown to golden charred. It should be seasoned only on the outside. It should be a vehicle for char.

A more perfect burger is the double burger. You still get the satisfying beefiness that comes with an inch's thickness of meat, but instead of having a flavorless or rubbery center, you double your char and end up with a beefy, salty, greasy, golden-brown and delicious center.

I declare war on thick burgers.

[Rhone1998]

This creates a center that's a lot closer to beef tartar than "hamburger." I have no problem with beef tartar, or any raw beef preparation - prepared right, they can be a singular luxury. But in order to prepare tartar properly, you need to properly season the beef. The reason this doesn't work in a hamburger is that, if you season ground beef and then toss, you end up seasoning the inside of the patty. Cooking ground beef that's essentially been seasoned from the inside out causes it to seize up and you end up with a rubbery burger (the salt denatures the proteins which then glue together in the heat). The alternative is to only season the outside, but then you end up with a flavorless tartar center if you have a thick burger.

If the inside of the burger only gets cooked to rare anyway, is that really enough heat to cause the problem you're describing, if the raw meat was seasoned? Maybe the answer is some salt, but not too much? Or to make sure the internal temp stays below a certain level? Or some combination of the two? Seems like this is an empirical question that could benefit from some (tasty) experimentation...

[DanCole42]

Sorry, you're on a lone crusade here. I won't order a burger at any place that insists on cooking to medium or darker, and it's hard to consistently get a medium-rare burger if the patties are thin.

I never said it should be overcooked. Just that the red in the middle should not overdominate the char.

If the inside of the burger only gets cooked to rare anyway, is that really enough heat to cause the problem you're describing, if the raw meat was seasoned? Maybe the answer is some salt, but not too much? Or to make sure the internal temp stays below a certain level? Or some combination of the two? Seems like this is an empirical question that could benefit from some (tasty) experimentation...

It doesn't take very much. Tartar should only be seasoned at the last minute for this very reason.

I should say that a "properly seasoned middle that's not rubbery" is not the holy grail here. I would still prefer a burger with more crust.