Diner-Style Cheeseburgers

jfm0830 · June 2013

Another burger from the Wicked Good Burgers cookbook. This burger gets griddle grilled and is covered for most of the cook. The cooking surface gets sprayed with water several times while cooking. While this reduces the sear, the resulting burger is very moist. I invited my father-in-law up to share this with me and while I thought the burgers were very good, he absolutely loved them. I missed a bit of the grilled taste that you get from the sear, while he thought they had plenty of flavor and loved how juicy they were.

They were having a sale on chuck steaks at the supermarket and I paid nearly $1.00 less per pound than a chuck roast & $1.50 per pound less than ground chuck. I stocked up and froze the extra steaks. Here I'd sliced up a 1 pound steak into strips and they go into the freezer for 45 minutes before being used.

Here I am testing the setup of my Egg. I am going to be cooking at 500 degrees at the griddle level so I can leave the top cap of and control temps with the lower draft door. As you can see I am able to use my infra-red thermo to shoot the griddle surface without having to open the lid. I've found that 500 at the griddle level is about 350 degrees at the dome thermo level.

My new baking area cabinets also serve well as an area to grind the meat for my burgers. This process also makes use of my stand mixer and zero tare scale just like baking.

Here the partially frozen strips of chuck steak are being ground.

The ground chuck gets simply seasoned with salt and pepper.

The zero tare kitchen scale gets used to weigh out 4 equally sized portions of the ground chuck.

Time to head out to the Egg. I've got the ground chuck, a water bottle, a silicon brush head (the handle is in the drawer outside near the Egg), some food safe gloves for handling the burgers, olive oil for brushing the griddle, some slices of N.Y. Cheddar cheese and some buttered rolls.

The half moon griddle grates are at 500 and the buns go on first. About 15 seconds later and they are done.

The burgers are on the griddle which is at 500 degrees.

The patties get covered for 15 seconds & then the cover is lifted while the griddle (not the patties) get squirted with water and the cap goes back on.

After a minute of cooking under the lid, the patties get flipped & are topped with cheese, then the griddle surface is sprayed with water and the burgers get covered and cooked for one minute more. Total cooking time is about 2 minutes 15 seconds plus the time it takes to squirt the griddle surface. The lid helps the burgers cook more quickly and stay very moist.

The burgers are done and get tented in foil for a few minutes.

Some assembly required. I added some gourmet smoked ketchup to the bottom patty...

The top patty received Dijon mustard.

The finished burger. One of the things I like about grinding your own beef, is you don't have the same food safety concerns regarding taking the meat to 160 degrees. The burgers can be taken to Medium Rare as I did here.

My fifth burger from Wicked Good Burgers was another winner. So far this cookbook has always come through with a great recipe for everything I've made from it whether it was a burger, bun or condiment.

Jim

bigphil · June 2013

looks really good .i just say that book thinking now i should have gotten it

mb99zz · June 2013

Man, that looks fantastic!

Hibby · June 2013

Nice write-up and pictures.

Tjcoley · June 2013

Nice burgers Jim. My best burgers on the Egg were done on a CI griddle.

paqman · June 2013

Makes me want to make burgers... And as usual greate write-up!

Grinding your own meat does NOT add any security. You should have the same concerns. When you grind your own meat, the bacterias that COULD be present at the surface of the meat are getting mixed with the rest of the meat (some of them ending up in the middle of the patties). Unless you have a way to destroy the bacterias at the surface before grinding you sbould treat the meat as being potentially contaminated. The only reason you do not end up being sick all the time is because the nasty bacterias are not always present (in fact they are not common).

That being said, taking a risk with a medium rare burger from time to time is so good

jfm0830 · June 2013

Thanks to everyone for looking & commenting.

As for food safety, everything I have read on the topic says that grinding your own meat is safer. The harmful bacteria is present on the outer surface of the meat There is much less exposed surface area on a roast vs beef that has already been ground up when you purchase it. But food safety is an important issue and everyone has to decide for themselves what is the correct thing to do. I feel comfortable with my decision, everyone else's mileage may vary.

Jim

Diner-Style Cheeseburgers

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