In Search of the Platonic Ideal: Cheeseburger
How to make a great hamburger is a question that has bedevilled many of our greatest minds for generations. For as long as Canadians have had griddles and broilers, for as long as summertime shorts-wearing cooks have gone into the yard to grill in pun-tastic aprons.
But the answer is simple, according to many of those who make and sell the nation’s best hamburgers: Cook on heavy, cast-iron pans and griddles. Cook outside if you like, heating the pan over the fire of a grill, but never on the grill itself. The point is to allow rendering beef fat to gather around the patties as they cook, like a primitive high-heat confit.
The beef fat collected in a hot skillet acts both as a cooking and a flavoring agent. Grease is a condiment that is as natural as the beef itself. A great burger should be like a baked potato, or sashimi. It should taste completely of itself.
It is best to start at the beginning. Great hamburgers fall into two distinct categories. There is the traditional griddled hamburger of diners and takeaway spots, smashed thin and cooked crisp on its edges. And there is the pub- or tavern-style hamburger, plump and juicy, with a thick char that gives way to tender, often blood red meat within.
The diner hamburger has a pre-cooked weight of 3 to 4 ounces; roughly an ice-cream-scoop’s worth of meat. The pub-style one is heavier, but not a great deal heavier. Its pre-cooked weight ought to fall, experts say, between 7 and 8 ounces.
Whichever style you cook, pay close attention to the cuts of beef used in the grind. The traditional hamburger is made of ground chuck steak, rich in both fat and flavour, in a ratio that ideally runs about 80 percent meat, 20 percent fat. Less fat leads to a drier hamburger. Avoid, the experts say, supermarket blends advertised with words like “lean.”
Whatever the blend, it is wise to keep the meat in the refrigerator, untouched, until you are ready to cook. Hamburgers are one of the few meats you want to cook cold. Ideally you want the fat solid when the patty goes onto the skillet. You don’t want any smearing.
Forming the patties is a delicate art. For the thin, diner-style hamburger, simply use a spoon or an ice-cream scoop to extract a loose golf ball of meat from the pile, and get it onto the skillet in one swift movement. You don’t need to set the heat below it to stun, a medium-hot pan will do it, accompanied for the first burger with a pat of melted butter to get the process started.
Then, a heresy to many home cooks: the smash. Use a heavy spatula to press down on the meat, producing a thin patty about the size of a hamburger bun. Roughly 90 seconds later, after seasoning the meat, you can slide your spatula under the patty, flip it over, add cheese if you’re using it, and cook the hamburger through.
The pub-style burger is in some ways even easier to make. The key is not to handle the meat too much. A common mistake people make is packing the burger really tightly. What you want is for it just to hold together, no more. Simply grab a handful of beef and form it into a burger shape, then get it into the pan, season it and cook for about three minutes. Then turn it over and, if using, add cheese. The burger is done three to four minutes later for medium-rare.
Which cheese you use is a matter of preference, but I prefer the highly processed slice that has covered hamburgers since the early days of McDonald’s restaurants. American cheese is designed to melt, and it has 50 percent more sodium than Cheddar or Swiss, so it adds a lot of flavor while also helping to hold the smashed patty together.
In choosing buns, the most important factor is, again, ratio. The bun-to-burger ratio is incredibly important. You want a soft bun, like a challah or potato, but whichever you use it shouldn’t overwhelm the burger. They should be as one.
Finally, there are condiments. You pull your burgers off the skillet, place them on the buns and then offer them to guests to dress. Ripe tomatoes and cold lettuce should be offered along with ketchup, mustard and, for a hardy few, mayonnaise or mayonnaise mixtures. Onions excite some. Pickles, others. But do not overdress. DO NOT SUBSITUTE COMPLICATION FOR PROPER COOKING TECHNIQUE.