🍔 This is a detailed guide for those who want to cook their burgers perfectly. If you do everything correctly, you'll pull off the best burger of your life at home.
Contents:
Ingredients
Tools
Preparation
Toasting the Buns
Cooking the Burger
Assembly
🍲 Ingredients
- Ground beef
- Burger buns
- Tomatoes
- Green ice lettuce
- Thin-sliced white onions
- American cheese
- Burger sauce
- + Any toppings you want to add
- Butter
- Salt & pepper
🔪 Tools
- Cast iron pan (best) if not, a stainless steel pan. Do not use a nonstick pan if you want a good crust.
- Steel spatula (Silicon spatulas are too thick and unstable.)
- Pan lid
🍳 Preparation
- Do not add the salt before cooking. Salting ground beef turns the beef mushy if left for a long time.
- Important: for the best texture, do not refreeze bread. Once you thaw the bread, you must consume it immediately or it will turn tough.
- Thaw the burgers in your fridge and cook while cold.
- Make sure you have all your ingredients ready for assembly before you start cooking.
- Work fast. Once you toast the bread, cook the burgers immediately.
🥯 Step 1: Toast the Buns
- Slice the bun in the middle. (Tip: most people make the mistake of making the bottom bun too thin, don't. If it's thin, it will disintegrate from the juices.)
- Add a generous amount of butter to the pan.
- Bring your pan to low-medium heat. (Tip: if you heat is too high, you will burn your buns.)
- Place the buns on the pan to toast, press lightly to make contact.
- This should take around 3-5 minutes to get a nice crust.
- Remove when crusty and golden brown. (Feel free to lift the bun to check.)
- Set buns aside for assembly, facing upwards.
🍔 Step 2: Cook the Burger Patties
- Make sure the burgers are still cold. Do not allow the burgers to reach room temp for food safety.
- [If you are forming your own burgers] For medium burgers, the patty needs to be at least 3/4-1 inch thick.
- [If you are forming your own burgers] For well-done burgers, the patty can be somewhere between 1/4 to 1/2 inch. Well-done burgers are not inferior to medium burgers—they're just as good.
- [If you are forming your own burgers] With your hands, roll and press on the patty firmly to shape, but do not oversqueeze and handle. This will ruin its structure.
- Press down to create a depressed dimple in the center of the burger. The burger will inflate like a balloon in the center while cooking and the dimple will make sure it's flat.
- Make sure the diameter of the patty is about an inch larger than the buns because the burger will shrink as you cook it.
- Heat up your pan to medium-high. Add cooking oil to cover the pan. (Tip: do not add butter because it will burn.)
- Once oil is lightly smoking, place the patty on the pan. For a great crust, press firmly with a spatula ensure the whole surface comes into contact.
- Season the surface of the burger with salt and pepper as it cooks.
- Leave it there until you see crispy edges, then flip. (You should be hearing a nice sizzle.)
- Once flipped, season with salt and pepper again.
- Place cheese on top of cooked side and cover the pan. (This will help the cheese melt.)
- Once cheese is melted, remove the cover and let the burger cook until it's done.
- Remove from plate by scraping the burger from the pan with a steel spatula.
👩🍳 Assembly
- You can stack the ingredients however you prefer.
- We like ours in this order: bottom bun, sauce, lettuce, tomato, onions, burger, cheese, sauce again, top bun.
🏆 Whew! Congratulations and enjoy your hard-earned burgers!
❓ If you have questions, feel free to reach out and send us a message.
If you read and followed our guide, please send us photos of your burger. We'd love to see it!