How to make the Perfect Burger at home, according to science.

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In this video, we break down the fundamentals of what makes burgers taste so good and put us on the pathway to making the perfect burger at home.

📚 Videos & Sources mentioned:

📃 Burger Recipes I've done:

USEFUL KITCHEN GEAR

⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 Intro
0:33 The pathway to the Perfect Burger
1:50 What is ground beef made of?
3:31 Experiment 1 - Lean Meat vs Beef Fat
6:40 What does 'fat is flavor' mean?
7:29 Experiment 2 - Chicken Burger with Beef Fat
10:30 What makes up 'beefy' flavor?
11:24 How does fat affect burger texture?
12:51 What are burger juices?
13:40 Experiment 3 - Lubrication Test
15:05 Why do we love burger juices?
16:33 Experiment 4 - Seared vs Steamed Burger
17:51 Experiment 5 - Crust Formation
18:37 Final Taste Test - 93/7 vs 80/20 vs 70/30
21:05 Conclusions

MISC. DETAILS
Music: Provided by Epidemic Sound
Filmed on: Sony a6600 & Sony A7C
Voice recorded on Shure MV7
Edited in: Premiere Pro

Affiliate Disclosure:

[samsky]

As a burger connoisseur. I'd like to give thanks to all the cows (and one chicken) that gave their lives in the name of perfecting burger knowledge

[Ryan_gogaku]

I would love for Ethan to look into cooking styles that actively *avoid* Maillard browning. In Thai cuisine, for example, laab is commonly made by essentially boiling the ground beef, and protein like chicken is added to a green curry in the sauce itself once there's already a liquid, again preventing browning. Japanese cuisine has famous dishes of both types: yakitori, where the whole point is browning from the charcoal grill, and then something like oyakodon, where the chicken is added to a liquid broth. Why not brown the meat first and add the fond to the broth/curry? What does that do to the flavor? I've always been curious, but never did a side-by-side.

[stevej]

I think the bun gets overlooked a lot, especially at neighborhood BBQs. Speaking for myself, I want a nice thick bun that can absorb all the juices and still give me a nice bready bite to complement the patty and condiments. I don't want a cheap bun that turns soggy within 1 minute of the patty being added to it.

[lauraredenbaugh]

My sister has this to say about burgers—when you eat your burgers plain—there’s no hiding the quality. Therein lies my only issue with the tests although you actually talk about it—that the single patty plain test demonstrated the differences much clearer than the “dressed” burgers. That tells me that toppings hide a multitude of sins when it comes to burgers.

[jowdemanne]

Ethan, this is *exactly* why I subscribed to your channel and love your content!
You don't just give recipes or whatever, you try to understand how food works and how to make it even better and take us along for the journey!
Thanks for the extensive testing. Loving it!

[twtchr]

I love your particular brand of food science. It's not organic chemistry or molecular gastronomy, it's just "at home" science. So much more accessible and practical, and I'm way more likely to use what I learn from you than some of the "pro" level videos. Keep it up!

[SunKissedPeach]

I love these videos you make, so much time is put into them and it shows and i want to rewatch them because they are just well put together

[Phantom-vojy]

if you steam burgers just go directly to jail

[timwhite]

This might be the most practical and informative 20 minutes about burgers I've seen. So often content creators are out in left field with special equipment or hard to source ingredients, or maybe just a process with way too many steps to be practical. I loved the spreadsheet infographic for summary. It will inform future burger choices. Thank you!

[theFrozeman]

I'd be really interested to see this repeated with a grill. Given that instead of pooling, you lose the fat that drops out I'd be curious how that would affect the ideal mix.

[darkerbinding]

Love your videos and all the actual facts of cooking and why/what works. Thanks for the work on giving us this great content. 👍

[Sergey-wgne]

The thing I found works well for low-fat burgers is mixing red onions into the ground beef. Works wonders for juiciness!

[HungryManKitchen]

Just an idea for the next episode, lamb burgers inspired by traditional kebabs? I suggest to experiment with lamb fat, which is the signature ingredient for great authentic kebabs.

[Madgod]

Here's an idea: Maillard browning is improved in alkaline environments - people sometimes use the "baking soda trick" when saute'ing onions. Maybe applying that trick to the lean burger would improve browning enough to compete with the fattier ones, or make the fattier ones even tastier? Loved the video by the way, incredibly in-depth.

[samde]

Really cool video, not seen anyone take this approach before but I think it's gonna be really useful in helping ppl understand why things taste good and how to improve! Looking forward to testing this myself!

[inti_graphics]

Me and my husband would like to THANK YOU for this video 😊 we just had some for dinner again and all we can think of is how come we spent half of our life making burgers wrong? Also, we would like to let you know that this and many other recipes from your channel have changed and improved our meals. Thank you 🤩🙌

[edwin]

I appreciate the addition of Vivaldi's Summer to build hype

[FixNK]

I like how he smiles when someone else is eating a burger... This man is genuinely enjoying sharing the secrets of foods to the world.

[tomrowse]

Excellent explanatory video as you delve deeply into food science—Thanks!!

[saelendraanto]

You're great Ethan, this video is perfect. I want to open my own burgershop, and your video is the only one who explain throughoutly about fat /lean ratio clearly.