5.Get your “mise” in place. Mise en place is a French cooking term for “everything in its place.” “Oh, merde” means “I can’t find the mayo, and now the burgers are getting cold, and the buns are on fire” (or something close to that). Lay out all your burger ingredients before you get started.
6.Big fat burgers are not my favorite. All these recipes use a quarter pound patty. If you want more beef, grill up two and do a double stack, but don’t make a giant half pound hockey puck of meat.
7.After cooking the burgers, let them rest on a clean plate for a few minutes to let the juices sink back into the patty, or you’re going to soak through your buns.
8.Proper burger construction: bottom bun, then mayo/mustard, then lettuce (which will help form a barrier between juicy beef and bready bun), then the beef, then the rest of the toppings. Lettuce, you have a job to do.
9.Flavor balance. I like to add weird stuff in my burgers, like kumquat jam. But to do this, you also need a salty element to balance it out, like manchego cheese. When mixing flavors, try to always think about sweet, salty, bitter, and sour (you know, how your tongue works!).
10.Have fun. They are just burgers. You can remove a topping if it’s not working (flicks olive off top of bun), or you can make the next one different.
There are a few different ways to properly cook a burger patty. You can pan fry it, grill it, or smash-grill it. But the USDA recommends cooking ground meats to an internal temperature of at least 160 degrees fahrenheit, which means “no pink.”
Pan Fry
Take a quarter pound of ground beef, and gently flatten it, being careful not to squish it too much. With your fingers, make a dimple in the center (this will help it cook more evenly). Turn the stovetop on medium, and heat your pan with a little butter or oil. Make sure it’s hot before adding the burger. Salt the burger, place in the pan, and listen for the sizzle! Cook for about 5 minutes, then flip. The cooked side should have a nice, dark brown sear. Add your cheese, and cook for another 3 to 5 minutes. Check inside the burger by making a little cut to test the doneness. A little pink is “medium.”
Grilling
If using a gas grill, turn the heat up to high and wait. If using a charcoal grill, heat the coals and wait until they have turned orange and have ashed-over. Brush the burgers with oil, and generously salt them. Grill the burgers until they are browned and starting to char up a bit, about 3 minutes, depending on how hot your coals are. Flip over the burgers, add cheese, and cook until the desired doneness.
Smash Burger-ing
I find this is best done outside, because you’ll get a bunch of splattered oil and smoke, but it’s worth it! Get a heavy bottomed pan, cast iron is ideal. If doing it outside, a baking steel or a cast iron plancha is great. Either way, heat it to piping hot. Take a quarter pound of beef, and lightly pack it into a ball. Season the ball with salt and pepper. Place the ball on the smoking hot surface, and then smash it down with a heavy spatula (my friend Rodney uses a metal tile trowel he got at a hardware store) and hold it down for about 2 minutes. Then, using the spatula or trowel, scrape up the burger (including all the good, crackly bits) and flip. Add cheese and cook about a minute longer.
Here is a step-by-step guide for making perfect buns. It uses the Easiest Buns recipe on page 61.
1.In the mixer bowl, add the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, egg, butter, and warm water. Stick your finger in it to make sure it’s not too hot, because you don’t want to kill the yeast.
2.Add the dough hook, and mix on medium for about 5 to 6 minutes.
3.After a few minutes, the dough should start coming together in one or more balls.
4.Remove the hook, and use your hands to combine the dough into one ball, and cover the bowl with a towel for an hour.
5.Look, it’s twice as big as it was!
6.Turn out the dough onto a cutting board. With a dough scraper, cut the ball into eight equal pieces, like a pizza.
7.Line two sheet pans with parchment. Take each dough triangle in your palm, and make a ball with it.
8.Make an “OK” sign with your fingers, and push the ball up through the hole in the “OK”, so that the top of the ball gets stretched smooth. Then pinch the bottom of the ball to seal it.
9.Now, on your cutting board or other work surface, place a dough ball seam-down, cupping your hand in contact with the top. Quickly roll the ball inside your cupped hand a few times to finish the shaping. Do all eight like this.
10.Place the balls on the baking sheets a few inches apart from each other. Cover and let rise for 1.5 to 2 hours.
11.Now they have risen again to about twice their original size. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
12.Mix an egg yolk with a few drops of water, and using a brush, paint the tops of each ball with the mixture. Cover the whole top, but don’t worry about the sides, because drips are fine! Then sprinkle the tops with seeds. Be generous!
13.Bake for 10 minutes, and rotate the sheets. Bake for 8 to 10 more minutes.
14.You’ve got buns! Eat them today, or store in a plastic bag for 2 to 3 days. You can also freeze them!
Buns: Uh…
Ketchup: Buy it. You don’t need to use ketchup, but if you must, there’s really only one ketchup that you should buy.
Mayo: This one is tricky. Homemade mayonnaise is great, but so is mayo in a jar. If you are worried about using raw eggs in homemade, then buy mayo from the store. But if you have access to fresh organic eggs, try homemade.
Pickles: Tie. There are plenty of great pickles on your store shelf. Some of them, like sweet little gherkins, are hard to make, because you may not be able to get the right kind of cucumber, unless you grow them yourself. But dill pickles, that’s another story. They are easy to make, and you can find perfect sized pickling cucumbers and fresh dill at your farmers market. And the Quick Pickle recipe in this book is super easy!
Mustard: Tie. Mustard from the store usually contains the same few ingredients that you’d use at home. But making it is also fun.
American cheese: Buy. For this book, I tried to make homemade American cheese. No good.
Ground beef: Buy. I don’t grind meat. I just don’t. I let Eric the Butcher do that. You