How to Make Better Burgers | Grilling Fridays | Serious Eats

Welcome to Grilling Fridays! All summer long, we'll be popping into your sub box on Friday afternoons with our top quick tips and tricks to becoming the ultimate grill master.

Consider this your ultimate handbook for taking your burgers to the next level.The tips we're setting out here are ones that, with very few exceptions, apply universally to all hamburgers, regardless of style. Thus, one thing you will not find in this list is specific cooking instructions regarding heat source, strength, and timing. When you're taking a formed patty from raw to cooked, there are no hard and fast rules that apply in every situation. Now get cooking!

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[jeffsnider]

When grilling, always open a beer first. Rookie video.

[Defund_HOA.]

Still learning here but that "salted properly" burger looked raw af

[dlc]

Keep toppings simple if you want to taste the burger. And get your grill or pan searing hot before putting the meat on.

[gaozhi]

I find i only need to flip mine once. You can also cause flares ups in the process. Biggest thing i learned from SE years ago was the not salting ahead and not overworking the meat tips. Thanks so much guys!

[roboslug]

Loved the video! Couple of thoughts, though. The way I get around the pre-salting problems is to salt the pre-grind cubes instead of salting the grind itself. If you add salt to the grind, most of it will initially affect the surface proteins, and since all those little grind bits are in contact with each other, of course you're going to get lots of cross-linking. Just cube up the meat before you grind it, and give the cubes 8-12 hours to absorb the salt mixture (1.5% salt, 1% dextrose, a little MSG, inosinate & guanylate, .25% Amesphos, same mix I use for fresh sausages actually). Once the salt and sugar are absorbed, partially freeze the meat and run it through the grinder as fast as possible. Chill the grind again and loosely press into patties.

Also, the dimple trick works nicely for really thick burgers that thin out around the edge, but I prefer to just press mine evenly flat and run a dough docking roller over them. That breaks up the patty just enough to prevent bulging and warping. Of course, this only works if you don't cook your patties too much past medium. If you cook your patties well-done, you're always going to get a little warping unless you use grill presses to hold them flat, which creates other problems I won't get into here.

As for "mix-ins", you can add those to the pre-grind mix too, and it works just fine. You just have to be careful, cuz if you add too much garlic, onion, paprika, etc, you end up with a burger that tastes like meatloaf or meatballs. If you dig that flavor, go for it--after all a meatloaf sandwich is a fantastic meal. But I personally like my burger to taste like beef and not much else. The only other add-ins I sometimes use is a little instant starch, methylcellulose and xanthan, in very small quantities. They don't affect the flavor, but they capture and hold a lot of the juices that would otherwise cook out of the burger. The cellulose holds the liquid while it's hot and the starch holds it when it cools and the xanthan makes it coat the edge of the burger where you just bit into it instead of dripping out. Kinda makes it feel like there's beef gravy inside the burger. I don't do that really often though, cuz oddly enough, people who like well-done burgers (which is most people) find it off-putting if a burger is extremely juicy. The juiciness reminds them of really rare meat. Their loss, I guess.

[StArFuRyZz]

We're not a big fan of the hockey puck style burger here; we make smashburgers but I have learned not to season until right before they go into the pan.

[ppolleunus]

SUMMARY
00:07 High-quality, freshly grounded beef, ±20% fat
00:16 Easier to work with when cold
00:28 Do NOT stir in mix-ins
00:42 For tender and juicy, handle as little as possible
00:47 Do NOT pre-salt
00:59 Form matters (size all evenly, press a dimple)
01:16 Season just before cooking
01:31 Frequent flipping = more even cooking (🤔 but see 00:42)
01:47 130°F/55°C in the center = medium-rare, 140°F/60°C = medium
01:57 Bun same diameter as patty. Toasting to stand up dripping juices

[Macca]

Wish they would stop using white text when there's light backgrounds... White text over a white plate is a bit of a pain...

[el_don_kikon]

Literally about to grill burgers today for the first time, the timing on this was impeccable.

[fortune]

When putting the burger on the grill do you put the indented side down first or the non-indented side down first?

[karenfromfinasse]

I was hoping to know the temp of the grill/ how long you cook it/ how do you melt the cheese on it?

[BISlover]

Editing tip: use a black-bordered text or something similar; there are a few instances in the video with borderless white text on a white background, which is distracting at best and an eyesore at worst.

[t.cobbseats]

Thank you VERY much for these tips! When weighing the burgers, is there an optimal weight that you'd suggest for the patties? Or, just as long as each patty is consistent in weight? Thank you again!

[FlyingTigersKMT]

70/30 chuck with light salt and pepper, chill in fridge and grill

[Paelorian]

What's the (culinary) advantage of a grill over a griddle or pan, the smoke? The (ideally slight) charring? Because the crust on a burger isn't as good as you can get by searing the whole face in a pan or on a griddle. I feel like I might as well cook burgers outdoors on induction hot plate with an extension cord, where it's possible. Of course, you can grill with a grate where there is no electricity or gas source. I don't have experience grilling and I don't really understand the appeal of doing it at home (as opposed to when camping when grilling may be the most practical way to cook). I probably don't understand something important. But unlike a smoker or a oven, which obviously do things outdoors we can't do inside our home kitchens, I don't know what a grill does, at least to a piece of meat, that I can't do as well or better in a pan. It's higher heat, but can't a pan get reach the ideal heat for cooking meat on a stove or induction plate? Besides the smoke and charring. We can add smoke flavor, but not charring. But is charring more important than a full-contact sear? I don't think so. I kind of like a little bit of carbonized taste, not so much as to be really acrid, but I'd rather have superior maillard browning. I want to read a good "Why Grill?" article explaining why people may want to get into grilling from the perspective of taste. I understand that some foods, like vegetables, are very different prepared inside the home kitchen, but a hamburger doesn't seem to lose any quality when cooked on a stove. In fact, the best hamburgers tend not to be grilled.

I'm not saying anyone's grill party isn't a blast or that I wouldn't find those burgers delicious, I just don't understand if grilled burgers can actually taste better or if it's just a fun way to cook that's often better suited for outdoor cooking than other methods since all it requires is a grate suspended over lit charcoal and no other power/fuel source.

[stephen]

What happened to putting 'toppings' or as Kenji likes to call them 'bottomings' on before the meat to stop all the juices seeping into the bottom bun?

[darkim]

The great debate: lettuce under or on top of the patty? 😂

[navyaf]

1. This isn't Tasty, change the annoying music.
2. What happened to your grits, I mean Polenta, video?

[YourMotivationalLifeAdvice]

Looks like I've been prepping, cooking and enjoying my tasty burgers completely wrong all these years.

[markafterdark]

You gotta have someone voice it not just text on screen