Hamburgers... What's the perfect temp to cook at?

nolaegghead

coffeeguydenton said:

In summary, there is no perfect temp and there is no average burger. As a rule, though, we can say the more char you want for a given IT or the rarer you want for a given amount of char, the hotter the grill should be.

fishlessman said:

over 400 direct for me. the thermopen wrecked burgers for me so i went back to my old method. put burger on grill, wait for juices to pool up on top, flip, wait til juices pool up on top, add cheese. that fda crap about 160 degrees for burger is rediculous to me, i grew up sampling raw ground burger
)

I wouldn't go that far. I like a pink burger as much as anyone. But they have very good reason for that recommendation. Grinding meat gets all of those yummy contaminates from the slaughterhouse from the outside of the meat to the inside. Steaks and such where the meat is intact only have contamination on the surface, which gets plenty hot, and that is why it is safe to eat them rare. It's all about tolerance for risk. You could eat 1000 burgers that way and be fine, and then the next could give you the worst explosive diarrhea you can imagine. If you're okay with that risk, have at it. But the recommendations are not crap.

1001 tasty non-overcooked burgers and a day on the sh*tter versus 1001 overcooked hockey pucks.....I'll take the former please.

I grind my own meat so I don't really worry about the cross contamination from x-thousand pounds of raw beef. 

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger (or it just kills you)

Terrebandit

Am I the only one who cooks my thick burgers indirect before a direct sear?

henapple

@Cazzy cooks his to around 100 degrees. ..

>:)

coffeeguydenton

1001 tasty non-overcooked burgers and a day on the sh*tter versus 1001 overcooked hockey pucks.....I'll take the former please. 

I grind my own meat so I don't really worry about the cross contamination from x-thousand pounds of raw beef. 

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger (or it just kills you)

It's the contaminants on the surface of the meat that you are grinding that are the problem. Unless you are doing the slaughtering yourself, that's almost impossible to control.  That being said, I agree that I don't want a hockey puck burger, and I don't eat them that way.  As I said to begin with, I like pink in my burger.  Just saying the FDA has good reason for their recommendation.

henapple

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

DMW

henapple said:

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

And what does kill you, wait...