what makes the best burger?

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you'd be suprised, a burger chain here does an amazing vege patty burger

I'm not interested in eating highly processed fake meat when I can eat real meat.

maybe in canada

the pattie at burger fuel is made from Mushroom, sweet potato, chickpea & basil

I'm not sure it matters where it's from, when I want meat I want meat not imitation meat.

idk FXE geographically NZ is in the middle of nowhere so id think stuff would be different. I mean half the globe is just australia, nz and some island

What I mean is that fake meat is NZ and fake meat in Canada are almost certainly going to rely on similar processes and similar ingredients. There's no reason to assume it can't be done just as well in one place as in another.

I'm not big on pretending so fake meat doesn't have much appeal.

I don't care whether you get a vege burger or not, sorry if sounded like I was dissing canada

That's what got my back up, but accepted.

Anyways, back to meat for burgers:

The very best hamburgers that I have eaten were cooked like this.

Form the patty with the most minimal handling you can use. You want a patty, but you don't want to overwork it. You want to have small pockets in the hamburger to catch and hold the grease instead of letting it run out. You want to leave air pockets in them, not compress them out of there. It doesn't really matter if the patty breaks into two patties, just arrange them on the bun to eat.

Don't mix anything in with the meat. When you do that, you are compressing the air pockets out. Feel free to sprinkle whatever you think you need on the outside of the patty. Mixing it in with the meat might give you some flavor from that, but you are destroying the natural flavor from the beef itself.

Minimal handling is key. If you overhandle it, the hamburger is second rate or worse.

Make the patty about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 inches thick. Maybe a little dimple in the middle of each side. I often sprinkle some pepper on the outside.

Cook the hamburger in butter in a skillet over medium heat. Let the hamburger get the maillard reaction from the butter, not from burning the outside of the meat.

Never press down on the hamburger with a spatula. All that does is compress those air pockets and then the tasty greases have to run out and flavor suffers.

Cook to medium. Or medium rare if you prefer. Maybe medium well, but you will be sacrificing quality. Definitely not well done.

When you take it out of the pan, set the patties on a paper or cloth towel and let them rest for five minutes or so. This is to let the greases collected in those air pockets congeal so that they don't run out when you eat the hamburger. Do not set them on top of the buns unless you want soggy buns.

When I'm making hamburgers, I usually set the patties out to rest and let them rest while I toast the buns and wash the cooking utensils. Typically, it takes about five minutes to wash the pan and the spatulas and set them aside to dry.

Put he patty on the bun after resting for at least five minutes, add your condiments, and enjoy.

There are downsides. With things like steaks, you can get some bacteria on the outside of the steak but that is all killed while you cook the steak. When they grind it up for hamburgers, these bacteria can mix in with the patty, not just remain on the outside, and cooking might not kill all those bacteria. That's why the conventional wisdom is to make the patties thin and cook them well done. That's fine, but if you want excellence, you gotta take chances.

So, to sum it up:
1) Minimal handling of the ground beef. Form a patty, not a hockey puck.
2) Cook in butter on medium heat.
3) No compression of the patty. Ever.
4) Let it rest. Five minutes should do it.

Note that if you want bacon, you can cook it along with the hamburger. Don't overcook it.

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As for toppings, about 35 years ago I would go with either mustard or ketchup. At one point in time, I turned vegetarian for about two years due to a digestive issue I had at the time and didn't get much mustard. I craved mustard. Once I was able to start eating meats again, I only used mustard. I don't think that I've had ketchup on a hamburger in maybe 35 years.

I almost always sprinkle Cholula hot sauce on the hamburger. In fact, if I'm going somewhere for a hamburger, I will typically take a bottle with me so I can sprinkle it on the hamburger.



Years ago, I would often eat a hamburger at a hamburger restaurant that would by Cholula sauce by the carton. They would put one bottle on every table and then line the windows. In a month, all that Cholula sauce would be gone. Before that, I would use a habanero sauce instead, but now I keep it on hand and even carry it with me.

Onions, pickles, tomato slices, and lettuce on top of that.

As for the meat to use, I can get wagyu ground beef readily around here from someone I went to elementary, junior high, and high school with who raises it. They even deliver it. Or you can get it at the local grocery store for about $5 per pound. This is good, but it doesn't make the greatest hamburgers because it has been worked so much by their equipment that there are no air pockets in the beef to catch the grease. So I get better results from regular ground beef at the store.

Also, we can get some pretty good quality preformed hamburger patties around here. Again, these are overworked so much that there are no pockets of air for the grease to congeal in.

The most basic thing to remember is minimal handling. If you overdo it, you are going to get second rate or worse hamburgers.

I find bread crumbs provide all the benefits of air pockets without the drawbacks. They're like little flavour absorbing/retaining sponges.

That's an excellent point. I definitely hadn't thought about that.

One thing that can be good, too, is to form the patty, then bread it like you would for chicken fried steak. Let it rest for about 15 to 20 minutes to let the breading take hold and then deep fry it or fry it in a half inch or more of oil.

You can then eat that separately with cream gravy on top and maybe mashed potatoes or french fries on the side (I like to dip french fries in the cream gravy instead of ketchup when I do this). If mashed potatoes, some green peas go with it, too.

Or you can put it on a hamburger bun. When I do this, I use cream gravy instead of mustard and Cholula sauce.

It can be really good. Maybe it's the breading that does it. I really never considered that.

Thanks.

nice im gonna try different meats as patties with breadcrumbs. two patties, two pieces of cheese and some kinda sauce and pickles

Last edited by enz on 28 May 2025, 8:12 pm, edited 2 times in total.

This is my kind of experiment.

Maybe not the cheese. Even the tiniest amounts of cheese make me very nauseous.

By the way, I knew a guy years ago who had very good luck with grinding up ribeye steaks for hamburger patties.

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Some years ago, we had a steer that had been hand raised and was very friendly. My niece adopted him and so we didn't sell him along with the other cattle that year. It was pretty odd to see a 4 or 5 year old girl running around with a 1,500 to 2,000 pound steer dutifully following her like he was a dog. Later when she was in school, a classmate would come out to the farm and they were invariable scared of such a large animal and kept their distance from him, but he would walk right up to my niece, lower his head so she could scratch his head and behind the ears, and then follow her around.

That steer had the run of the farm/ranch for years and was very well taken care of.

About eleven or twelve years later, the steer was starting to have trouble getting around due to age. We were hesitant to have him butchered for our own consumpion so the local butcher shop butchered him without charge, ground up all the meat into ground beef, and delivered it to a local food pantry where it was highly appreciated.

Last edited by kokopelli on 28 May 2025, 9:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'll take double cheese, to ensure kokopelli's safety.

I really appreciate that three gold stars for your kind offer to take it off my hands and destroy it: