Burgers

Nope. The only thing I want in my burger is ground beef. I'll put the other stuff on top.

MM

Not usually. I usually put it on top. This is because not everyone in my family likes the same thing. I've got some fussy eaters to deal with. But I have done the 'cheese inside two patty's' thing. The one they call the 'Jucy Lucy.' And I've mixed in crumbled bacon before. Another one that I like (I think I'm the only one in the family though) is crumbled blue cheese or Gorgonzola. And I would (if allowed) experiment with chopped red onion and cilantro.

I've put oatmeal, beef bullion, ketchup, or mustard into mine. If I weren't allergic to cinnamon, it might be an interesting choice. I didn't like the ones I made with egg mixed in; I was hoping they would be fluffy, but they were like hockey pucks.

The idea of putting in a sweet thing like chocolate reminds me of an idea that I had years ago - wanted to make something like caramel creams but using turkey. I was quite confused by the terms turkish delight and sweetmeats as a child, imagining them to be a candied meat paste. Was kind of disappointed when I found out otherwise. I don't have the equipment to turn meat into a smooth paste though; it doesn't seem like a blender would be sufficient.

sunandshadow said:

I don't have the equipment to turn meat into a smooth paste though; it doesn't seem like a blender would be sufficient.

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A decent food processor will turn raw mince into mince paste, but the resulting meatballs/burgers/etc. tend to be dry. Like falafel, dry. I most often use very lean ingredients, which doesn't help. If you're looking for pre-pasted meat, have you ever peeled the skin off a raw sausage? Some of them are ground so fine they'd go straight through a coffee filter.

That chocolate burger sounds like mole to me! The best mole I've had so far included cocoa powder, pumpkin seeds and loads of spices. *Wonders if it's too late to cook something* *Wonders when I got so old that "too late" became a concept*

I'm fond of an Oklahoma-style onion burger (where you smash the patty onto a mess of onions on the flattop so the meat and the onions cook together and become one). I also like a middle-eastern type burger with a little garlic mixed into the meat along with salt & pepper. But generally speaking if you're adding a lot of non-meat stuff (herbs, spices, condiments, other stuff) into the meat before shaping & cooking, you're making sausage or meatloaf patties, not burgers. Which may be very tasty and go well in a bun, but let's keep our categories straight!

Dried onion soup mix (mixed with a very tiny bit of water) before forming patties

I remember my kids loved putting hamburger relish between two small uncooked patties, sealing it around the edges, then I cooked them.
This way the relish didn't slide off the burger or get the roll mushy.

stormie said:

I remember my kids loved putting hamburger relish between two small uncooked patties, sealing it around the edges, then I cooked them.
This way the relish didn't slide off the burger or get the roll mushy.

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Wow, that sounds delicious! I was just wondering what to cook for dinner aaaand we have a winner!

I was visiting a Pea festival once and they had peas in everything, so we had these burgers with peas in them, which turned out to be great. So far, that's tried and tested and proven good. At home I've experimented with putting spices, herbs or chopped veg in burgers but the results were never great. Most of the time the resulting burger would taste rather nondescript, despite the spices themselves being quite interesting. I've tried adding soy sauce but I think it just ran out during the cooking, haha.
The only actual improvement was adding diced onion to the burger meat, but that's all. Everything else was a waste.

Meatballs are a whole different business, but with meatballs you got other ingredients that would hold the flavour (such as breadcrumbs), so adding herbs and spices there gives completely different (and improved) results.

I copied my recipe by watching Marcus Wareing - a two Michelin star chef - make a burger on MasterChef: The Professionals.

Start by putting an oven tray in the freezer. Then dice half an onion and sweat in a mixture of oil and butter*. Once soft, take the tray out of the freezer and spread the onion out. You want it to get cold quickly so that when you add it to the meat it doesn't start cooking the meat.

Make a mince from 350g chuck steak and 6 rashers of streaky bacon (note: British bacon <> US bacon). Add rosemary, thyme, a good crack of salt and pepper, and a whole egg. Add the onions (once cold) and mix together.

Make your patties and put in the fridge for a short time to help them firm up. When you're ready to cook, seal the burgers on both sides in a frying pan, then brush with english mustard. Put the whole pan into the oven and cook to your preference. I add cheese at this point and let it cook onto the burger in the oven.

I'm no chef, but this recipe makes the best burgers I've ever tasted.


*: salted butter is normal in Britain, but I think most US butter is unsalted?

If you are going to add chocolate or nutella then be sure to add a nice dose of cumin. It will balance it out and is pretty close to a decent burger I had made in the Cincinnati-style-chili sort of thing.

If you do have to make a paste of the meat, which certainly can make the burger dry and tough you can soften it and make it moister by adding some cooked black beans into the mix when using the processor. About a third bean to meat by volume works pretty well. It's also a cheap way to stretch burger if more than expected people are want to show up, but be sure to add extra spices. The beans need seasoning too.

I usually make my burgers like meatballs, mixing in breadcrumbs, egg and seasoning, then shaping the mix into patties. Just ground beef by itself tastes very bland to me and I've never been a fan of it alone.

I don't do much to beef burgers, but we love to experiment with all sorts of additions to turkey burger. I start out with an egg, two slices of bread processed into fine crumbs, and a dollop of oil (olive or other, depending) to one pound of ground turkey as a basic recipe--the panade helps keep the burgers from falling apart. Then we add all sorts of stuff--favorites so far are feta cheese, chopped kalamata olives, and minced scallions (served with a tzatziki sauce), or pureed chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, minced scallions, chopped fresh jalapenos, and a lot of cumin and garlic (served with fresh pico de gallo.)

Well, I love boring ground chuck, Cole Slaw, American Cheese--though Monterrey Jack is lish--Ketchup, mustard, Mexican onion, pickles.