Extra-Crusty Burgers (My All-Time Favorite Burger Recipe)

Of the thousands of burgers I've cooked in my time and the dozens of burger recipes I've published or put on restaurant menus, this is my all-time favorite.

Correction: This is the current iteration of my favorite branch of the burger evolutionary tree. This is a style of burger I love more than a big, fat, juicy backyard burger. More than the Oklahoma Onion Burger. More than a Quarter Pounder. Even more than my beloved smash burger.

This is the extra-crusty burger. What makes it extra-crusty? What makes it so delicious? And most importantly: why don’t I make it more often? We’ll get to all of that, but let’s first take a brief stroll down the tallow-scented cobblestones of memory lane.

Meat Your Heart Out

I tested the first iterations of this burger in 2008, while I was a test cook at Cook’s Illustrated magazine. My assignment was to update the magazine's basic hamburger recipe, which resulted in my Best Old-Fashioned Burgers recipe (paywall). What I found through some intense solo grinding sessions is that when it comes to burgers, the freshness of the grind makes an immense difference in the texture of the burger. Why? Meat proteins are sticky. Think of them as little balls of velcro. Any amount of working or packing after grinding, causes those proteins to stick together tighter and tighter. This translates to a denser, bouncier texture in the finished burger.

This difference is easily noticeable when you compare meat that has been pressed into a package at a supermarket vs. meat that is freshly ground by the butcher. But even beef ground at the butcher spends some time being jostled and compacted in its packaging as you get it home and form patties.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. For some forms of burgers, you need your meat to stick together enough that the burger holds its shape as it cooks; A backyard burger needs to be cohesive enough that it can survive a few flips without falling through the grill grates. Balls of beef destined for smashing need to stick together as you smear them onto a hot griddle.

But the question I had was: what if I were to make a burger recipe that absolutely maximizes looseness in the patty? A burger that was handled as little as possible between grinding and cooking?

Once You Grind, You Don’t Rewind

This, of course, meant devising a method of grinding meat at home that doesn’t require a home cook to purchase a standalone meat grinder. During my time at Serious Eats, I tested various meat grinding methods and found that while hand-chopping delivers the most interesting and exciting texture (and is my preferred method when I feel like a workout), the food processor delivered the best balance between speed and excellent texture. The key was to trim excess gristle off the meat (it can gum up the blades), cut it into 1-inch cubes, then—importantly—partially freeze them before pulsing them in a food processor in batches.

[Hand-chopping burgers delivers the most interesting texture]

The freezing performs two important goals. The first is that colder meat is firmer and thus easier to slices through (anyone who has partially frozen a flank steak to thin-slice it for stir-fries knows this). The second is it ensures that the beef fat doesn’t soften and smear during chopping. Instead, it remains in distinct little chunks that render as the patties cook, resulting in pockets of rendered beef fat that deliver little bursts of intense flavor as you eat.

The cut of beef used also makes a big difference. I held a series of taste tests, grinding various cuts of beef and feeding them to a panel of blind tasters. I called them “burger varietals.”

What I found was that there is a big difference in the flavor of meat depending on where it’s cut from. Cuts like flank and brisket have a bright, minerally flavor to them. Skirt steak and hanger are intensely beefy, while short rib or oxtail have strong umami notes with a mouth-filling richness. In the same way that an orchestrator can build a sound by adding bass, treble, and soprano notes, we can build a flavor profile by mixing various cuts of beef into our burger.

This was when I landed on a blend I called the Blue Label Burger Blend. It’s a fiddly recipe that requires de-boning oxtails which are still delicious, but have since skyrocketed in price. These days I skip that blend and generally go for either a mix of short rib and brisket, or, if I want my patties richer, short rib and chuck.

Shaping the Patties

With the grind nailed down, I moved on to patty shaping. My first thought was to follow typical patty-forming advice: Toss the meat gently from hand to hand until it just holds together, then shape it into a disk slightly larger than your bun to account for any shrinkage. What I found was that the more times I tossed it back and forth, the tighter the patties became.

No duh, right?

But this led me to think: what if I could form patties with minimal handling? Could I form a patty without picking up the meat at all?

This was the plan when, in 2008, my friend Bryan Roof (currently the Culinary Travel Editor at Cook's Illustrated) and I nearly opened a burger joint together. The operations we put together involved a glass-doored meat locker in which a butcher would cut cubes of beef and feed them into a grinder only after your order was placed. The meat would be ground directly onto a tray where it would then be loosely collected into a patty shape without any lifting and minimal pressing.

[Handling the meat as little as possible when shaping patties makes for a looser, crustier burger]

From here, cooks would not lay a finger on it. Instead, they’d season it, sliding the spatula underneath to gently transfer it to a hot griddle, sear it until crisp and deeply browned, carefully flip it and top it with a slice of American cheese (partly for salt and tang, partly for gooey, fatty texture, and partly to help hold the loose patties together), then transfer it directly to a waiting bun.

The result was a burger that, from the moment the meat was ground until it was picked up by the customer, would never be lifted by human hands, and only minimally touched for shaping.

Those burgers were phenomenal, if I say so myself. The biggest difference that minimal handling makes is that the resulting craggy, cratered surfaces offer extra surface area that crisps up beautifully as the burgers sizzle.

(Unfortunately, though the research and experience were worthwhile, that restaurant plan was a casualty of the 2008 economic crisis and never made it off the ground.)

Bringing them Home

Making them at home is more work than your typical burger and requires the use of a food processor or meat grinder, but it’s still simple enough. I grind the meat straight onto a flat surface, use a bench scraper to divide it into patty-sized piles, then pat those patties into shape as gently as possible. The goal is to get them to hold together just enough that you can transfer them and flip them without having them fall apart.

(An interesting corollary phenomenon is that burgers that are loosely packed like this barely shrink at all as they cook: The protein bonds that typically tighten like rubber bands and pull burger meat in during cooking are not strong enough to make a significant impact when the meat is so loosely bound. With loose patties, WYSIWYG.)

The griddle was a necessary step for a restaurant-style burger that is cooked en masse. But at home, we have the luxury of cooking fewer burgers at a time with a wider range of pan options. What I found was that if you cook the burger in a cast iron skillet just big enough to fit it, the fat rendering out of the patty will start to collect. The meat essentially deep fries in its own rendering fat, giving you an even crisper and beefier texture and flavor.

[A pan just big enough to hold the patty allows the rendering fat to collect and fry the meat.]

And that is the reason I don’t make it more often: it’s only really practical when you are cooking for one person at a time, as the best version of the burger is made in a single burger-sized skillet. Once you start adding patties and using a bigger pan, you either lose heat or you lose rendered fat depth and thus crisping and browning.

This is the burger to eat when you’re on a date with yourself, preferably leaning over the sink in your underwear.

Which takes us to the toppings. We’re eating alone, so we may as well bring on the raw onion funk. When topping this particular burger, I like to keep things really simple. A pile of thinly slivered onions placed directly on the beef and held in place with a slice of American cheese. A soft, toasted burger bun (I toast it dry—no butter, so we can focus on the beef flavor), pickles on the bottom, and an In-N-Out-style [TK] tangy special sauce made with mayo, ketchup, relish, and sugar on top.

Are more toppings or bottoming out of the question? No—it’s your burger, and nobody is watching, so do what you want with it. Are they necessary? Absolutely not.

A Note on Seasoning

Over the course of my testing, I’ve found that while salt is absolutely essential for flavoring your burger patty, when you salt it can have an immense impact on the finished texture. Salt will dissolve meat proteins, which makes them even stickier which, in turn, makes the meat extra-sensitive to over-handling. Salt your beef at any stage before the patties are completely formed—whether it’s salting the meat before grinding or salting the ground meat before making your patties—and your burgers will end up tough and almost bouncy.

Here is an excerpt from my first book, The Food Lab, where I demonstrate this (and watch the video for an even more dramatic representation)

My advice: never salt your patties until they are formed.

When it comes to other seasonings, I typically use ground black pepper (I add it before cooking so that it mellows out and sweetens with the heat of the pan), along with a sprinkle of MSG (about a 1:8 ratio with the salt) in order to boost umami.

I know grinding your own beef and using this odd approach to forming patties seems like a lot of work for a simple hamburger, but there’s a reason this is my favorite burger of all time, and I want you to find out why for yourself.

Extra-Crispy Burgers Recipe

Every recipe I publish here is personally tested, tasted, and approved.

What I like about this recipe:

• Grinding meat fresh yields a uniquely loose and crisp texture.

• Selecting flavorful cuts of beef makes these patties extra-beefy.

• Minimal handling ensures that the burgers are juicy and tender.

• Cooking in a skillet just large enough to fit a single patty lets the burger cook in its own rendered fat.

• Seasoning with salt and MSG boosts umami.

• Placing the onions under the cheese softens them and traps their flavor against the meat.

YIELD: Makes enough beef for 4 patties, but only cook one at a time.

ACTIVE TIME: 30 minutes

TOTAL TIME: 40 minutes

Notes: You can use all chuck or a combination of brisket, sirloin, and short rib in place of the chuck and short rib. If using bone-in short rib, buy twice as much as you need by weight in order to account for the weight lost from the bone and gristle.

Ingredients:

For the Sauce:

3 tablespoons (45g) mayonnaise (I used Kewpie)

1 tablespoon (15g) ketchup

1 tablespoon (15g) sweet pickle relish

1/2 teaspoon (2g) granulated sugar

For the Burgers:

12 ounces (340g) beef chuck, trimmed of gristle and cut into 1-inch cubes.

4-8 ounces beef short rib (110-220g), boned, trimmed of gristle, and cut into 1-inch cubes

Kosher salt, MSG, and freshly ground black pepper

Vegetable oil

Thinly sliced onions

4 slices American cheese

4 soft white burger buns, lightly toasted

Pickle chips

Directions

1. For the Sauce: Combine all sauce ingredients in a small bowl and stir. Adjust seasoning to taste with salt and pepper.

2. For the Burgers: Spread the meat cubes on a large aluminum sheet tray and place them in the freezer for 15 minutes. They should feel firm and icy on the outside, but still pliable.

3. Working with half the meat cubes at a time, place them in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse until the mixture is finely chopped but not pasty, about 15 short pulses. Dump the meat onto a sheet tray and repeat with the remaining half. Alternatively, chop the meat by hand using a sharp, heavy cleaver and re-chilling it as necessary so that it chops cleanly instead of smearing.

4. Without picking the meat up, divide it into four even piles on baking sheet and gently press piles into patties approximately 4-inches wide and 1/2-inch thick. Stop as soon as the patties are formed—do not overwork them or over compress them. Season them generously with salt and pepper and lightly with MSG. Using a wide metal spatula, carefully flip the patties and season the second side (if they fall apart at all during flipping, don’t worry—just gently coax them back together.

5. Open your window, disarm your fire alarm, and be prepared for splatters. Heat a thin film of vegetable oil in the bottom of a heavy cast iron or stainless steel skillet just large enough to fit a single burger patty. Heat over high heat until just starting to smoke. Using a spatula, carefully transfer one patty to skillet and cook without moving until dark crust forms, about 2 1/2 minutes . Carefully flip patty and top with a small pile of thinly sliced onions and a slice of cheese. Continue to cook until the second side is crusty and browned, a minute or two longer.

6. Meanwhile, spread some sauce on bottom burger bun and top with some pickles. Top with the cooked patty, close the buns (adding more sauce to the top bun if you’d like), and eat immediately. Repeat with the remaining burgers. Share with friends, or eat them all yourself. Uncooked patties can be wrapped and stored in the fridge for a day or two, or frozen between sheets of parchment, transferred to a freezer bag, and stored for several months. Thaw before cooking.