Making home made burgers for a dumby...

DyldeBrill

Elegant Chaos wrote: »

The quality and fat content of the mince is really important of course. It can be tempting to go for the "best" quality mince e.g. the one with the least fat, but the flavour can take a hit if you do that. One option that I like is to fry some lardon (Lidl or Aldi are ok), cool, chop and add to your mix. You don't need a huge amount but it lifts the flavour.

And definitely a dash of Worcestershire (sp?) sauce...

Worcestershire sauce is a must! I like to add some into Greek Yogurt and use it as a sort of sauce for the burger.Goes great with pickles

Happyman42

Try this with the left over burger mix;
Loosen the mixture with a little milk so it resembles a paste.

Get a sheet of filo or puff pastry from the freezer and lay out on worktop, smear mix over sheet and roll up like a swiss roll. Chill it in fridge for an hour or so.
Heat oven and cut 'swiss roll' in thin slices and lay on a greased baking tray. Cook until pastry looks cooked, 20 mins or so (I think) and enjoy delicious mini bitesize, all in one, burgers. Great kids party food.
Make up a mix of wholegrain mustard and mayo and apply a small dollop on the centre of each bite for the adults!

Halloween Jack

How much horse are people adding, as a rule?

Seaneh

Ignore all previous recipes.

Never put bread, eggs or any other other fillers or binders in your burger, or I'll hunt you down.

Take your minced beef (15% fat, at least) and dump it in a big mixing bowl.

Season it with plenty of salt (like, more than you think you need) and a few pinches/grinds of black peper.

I like to add a bit of grated onion, dont try finely dice it, grating actually breaks down the cell walls a lot more than slicing/dicing and will give you uniform tiny pieces that are soft.

And that's it, give it all a good mix and then leave it aside for a good 20 minutes.
This does 2 things.

1) brings your meat up in temp a little which means it will cook more evenly (cooking meat from cold is silly)
and
2) allows the salt to draw the proteins from inside the meat out, it is these proteins that will be your binding agent, no need for eggs or bread which I honestly think is a bloody sin to add to a burger.

I like to make 1/3rd lb patties which I like to keep pretty thin, about 1/2 inch is perfect. This way, the burger will cook more quickly and the outside will have a nice level of browning but not be over cooked and the inside will still be moist and juicy but fully warmed through, it will still stay moist even if you're a fan of well done burgers.

I have at times added a little extra like a bit of sriracha or bbq sauce or something, but I'd only add about 1/2 a teapoon per burger.

A burger should taste of beef, not 5bazillion added flavours, let the meat stand out, save the flavours for the toppings (make a flavoured mayo or something to go with it).

the beer revolu

Seaneh wrote: »

Ignore all previous recipes.

Never put bread, eggs or any other other fillers or binders in your burger, or I'll hunt you down.

Take your minced beef (15% fat, at least) and dump it in a big mixing bowl.

Season it with plenty of salt (like, more than you think you need) and a few pinches/grinds of black peper.

I like to add a bit of grated onion, dont try finely dice it, grating actually breaks down the cell walls a lot more than slicing/dicing and will give you uniform tiny pieces that are soft.

And that's it, give it all a good mix and then leave it aside for a good 20 minutes.
This does 2 things.

1) brings your meat up in temp a little which means it will cook more evenly (cooking meat from cold is silly)
and
2) allows the salt to draw the proteins from inside the meat out, it is these proteins that will be your binding agent, no need for eggs or bread which I honestly think is a bloody sin to add to a burger.

I like to make 1/3rd lb patties which I like to keep pretty thin, about 1/2 inch is perfect. This way, the burger will cook more quickly and the outside will have a nice level of browning but not be over cooked and the inside will still be moist and juicy but fully warmed through, it will still stay moist even if you're a fan of well done burgers.

I have at times added a little extra like a bit of sriracha or bbq sauce or something, but I'd only add about 1/2 a teapoon per burger.

A burger should taste of beef, not 5bazillion added flavours, let the meat stand out, save the flavours for the toppings (make a flavoured mayo or something to go with it).

Yes!

CelticRambler

Good man, Seaneh! :-)

@readyletsgo, seeing as this is your first burger adventure, keep it simple. Keep the bread for your sandwiches and the milk for your tea. Leave all the weird and wonderful spices for another day, until you've figured out how to make a really good, 100% beef burger. As Seaneh points out, the salt is not just a flavour enhancer - it helps to change the physical characteristics of the meat (like a kind of marinade) and makes for more of a "burger" not just a lump of meat-bits squashed together.

lg123

Toast4532 wrote: »

Susie Q's burgers are fabulous. Utterly delicious, they have never let me down.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=79167232&postcount=2

This recipe looks great. I always use whole grain mustard in mine, great stuff.

A few weeks ago I tried a Gordon Ramsay recipe with a load of blue cheese mixed into the meat, they were pretty damn good.
100g of cheese to 1kg mince, I think I was a little more generous than that. They also had a little red onion, chives, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt n pepper. Funnily they didn't taste anything like blue cheese.

rubadub

BailMeOut wrote: »

PS: The bun should be the same diameter (or smaller) than the burger itself. Nothing worse than biting into a burger and only getting bread!

I hate the rise of those extra large rolls, always end up getting these saucer size buns with a meatball in the middle.

I like them really thin burgers too. Mine would only have mince, salt & pepper, -no oil, mince of 15%+ fat should have enough oil. I squish it together than squash it out on tinfoil, really wide. The thinner the burger is the more shrinking occurs when cooked. I then leave the mince on the tinfoil. I heat up a pan (no oil) and turn it upside down. I then put the mince up to it and flip it over. So now the mince is cooking and the top of the burger is covered in foil. I leave the foil on as it sort of steams it and makes it mind very well, otherwise thin burgers are hard to flip. After a bit of cooking you can peel the tinfoil off easily, this can be reused and is nice & oily. Then flip it, I only try and flip burgers once ever.

This tinfoil trick works on BBQs too, but I put it tinfoil side down onto the grill, since turning the BBQ upside down is too difficult
On the BBQ you will see it cooking and shrinking on the tinfoil. If you put skinny burgers on a harsh BBQ grill as it shrinks it pulls itself apart, since it sticks on the metal rods but shrinks between them.

cookie75

lg123 wrote: »

A few weeks ago I tried a Gordon Ramsay recipe with a load of blue cheese mixed into the meat, they were pretty damn good.
100g of cheese to 1kg mince, I think I was a little more generous than that. They also had a little red onion, chives, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, salt n pepper. Funnily they didn't taste anything like blue cheese.

Love those blue cheese burgers found it very hard to eat any other kind after making these they are delicious, lumps of Cashel blue cheese melting inside the burger a little peace of heaven !!