- 2 days ago
Here's how to make the best hamburger recipe ever by the co-founder of Honest Burgers, Tom Barton...
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I'm Tom from Honest Burgers, I'm one of the co-founders and I'm going to show you today
00:04how to make a humble beef burger.
00:07Alright, so like every good burger starts with great beef.
00:14This is ours here, we use two cuts, both readily available in a decent butcher's.
00:19We've got chuck steak and rib cap.
00:22One of the things we do which is quite unique in our butchers is we don't mince our burger
00:27which is quite, that's kind of a common ground is a minced burger and when you mince something
00:34you basically squash it through a tiny little hole right and when you do that you squash
00:38a lot of the goodness out of the burger and you break the texture down.
00:42So a lot of burgers will be minced like twice, three times, four times sometimes.
00:47The more you mince it the less natural the texture is, the more rubbery the texture is.
00:52So what we do is we chop, just like steak tartare or ham and steak hash, you end up with a really
01:00natural lovely texture and you keep all that really amazing fat and all that amazing juiciness
01:05in there.
01:06So all you need at home is a very sharp knife, chopping board and like I said, decent amount
01:12of chuck steak and rib cap.
01:14So I've got one kilos worth here, so I've got about 800 grams of chuck and 200 grams of rib
01:20cap and the best way to chop it nice and fine is to start slicing it really really thin.
01:28The thinner you go now the easier it will be to get it chopped really really finely, kind
01:33of like the thickness of a ration of bacon if you can.
01:37So I've sliced those up nice and thin and then this is our chuck steak.
01:41So this is a kind of standard stewing steak, slow cooking, really really good for burgers
01:49as well because it's got a nice flavour but yeah it's quite tough so you need to do something
01:53with it.
01:54Obviously what we're doing now is we're chopping nice and fine.
01:57There is a bit of natural fat in chuck, sometimes more than others obviously it's a natural product,
02:03but we're getting the majority of our fat from the rib cap and you can see the chuck has
02:09got a bit of fat running through it but like I said most of it is coming in from the rib
02:15cap itself, loads of fat, that can be sometimes 50% if not more.
02:20We've sliced it nice and thin, I appreciate this might seem like a lot of effort to go for
02:26a burger but trust me it's worth it.
02:29You get a really amazing steak like texture.
02:33So what you've got to do now is you're taking those long thin strands and you're basically
02:38just going to cut them really really fine.
02:42You want to just go as much as you can really, you can't really do, you can't really overdo
02:45it at this stage because you need to get it nice and fine, you need to get that fat nice
02:51and fine so when you mix it together with the leaner bit with the chuck it all kind of
02:58blends together so that's what you're kind of after.
03:01So we think that a decent burger literally needs nothing more than good quality meat and
03:10salt and pepper and really really really important that you don't add salt at this stage or pepper
03:19because what ends up happening is the salt will literally just suck the moisture.
03:24So we don't want to do that with the burger and it will happen in a burger in a couple
03:29of hours if you leave it and that's when you start to break the texture down, you start
03:32getting a really rubbery texture and worse than that obviously you're sucking out all
03:37of the really lovely flavours.
03:39So the other good thing about these cuts of meat is they're not crazy expensive and that's,
03:43you know, one of the best things about burgers is you really don't want to put expensive
03:48meat, probably a butcher you might be paying six quid, six pound a kilo, something like that.
03:57Right so now we've got our meat cut up nice and fine, you need to give it a good mix because
04:01we've got loads of fat in the rib cap and not a huge amount in the chuck so you want to get
04:07that fat evenly distributed and get nice stuck in and it's good to do with your hand as well
04:12alright, if you use your hands, the heat from your hands, they help the fat kind of start
04:17to melt a little bit and that's what we're using as our glue.
04:20So what I'm going to do now, this is an American technique, it's called smashing.
04:24So you take a ball, we're going to say that's roughly 150 grams, I know that because I've
04:29made many of these in my life and you basically just bang it together.
04:35By doing this, again you're getting a bit of heat in there, you're going to get the fat
04:40starting to glisten a little bit so you know the fat is kind of melting and then as soon
04:45as we're confident, take that onto our board in between the paper and then one of these,
04:52you can pick up one of these online, they're about 25 quid, nice firm press and then we've
05:01got our first burger right there.
05:11So we're going to get about seven patties out of this mix, we did about a kilo, really important
05:17now we go put them in the fridge, they need to set, like I said if you try and cook these
05:21now they're going to fall apart.
05:22So we need to put them in the fridge, get them set, four hours, six hours, something
05:26like that and then they'll be ready to go.
05:29Alright so burgers are ready, they've been chilled in the fridge so they're nice and firm,
05:35they're going to hold together when we cook them.
05:38I'm going to say something controversial now, even on a beautiful hot sunny day like today,
05:44I'd still be cooking my burgers inside in a frying pan.
05:49It's the best way, I really mean that, you know if you're going to go to all that effort
05:52on texture, on flavour, on sourcing good quality meat, you put it in a BBQ, you're not going
05:57to get all that flavour in there.
05:59So we want to get a pan super hot like this, you drop the burger in and it's going to literally
06:04sear all that flavour in and you don't want to just get this really dark crust on the burger,
06:09that is like gold right, you want to keep that in there so it keeps all the juice and
06:13all the flavour, all the reasons for us chopping, not mincing, it's going to keep it in there.
06:18Barbecuing just doesn't work by that.
06:21So you don't even have to put any oil in the pan which is going to go straight in because
06:25there's so much fat in the burger, it's going to hold and now we're going to season very
06:30liberally with salt and pepper and you do have to go pretty big on the salt and pepper because
06:39there's nothing running through there so you're only going to have a salt crust on the top
06:44and a salt crust on the bottom.
06:45So trust me when I say it, you've got to go quite big on the salt and pepper.
06:50We're going to just do a really humble beef burger today so there's not crazy amounts going
06:56on in there but because we've got this amazing beef you're going to get all that flavour through.
07:00So we've just got some shredded little gem lettuce on a toasted glazed bun.
07:06We're going to be cooking this for about three minutes each side.
07:09That's going to give us a really nice medium pink in the middle.
07:13Honest, we do that, we go down to medium rare as well.
07:18It is pretty complicated serving medium rare burgers and serving medium burgers.
07:23We go to a hell of a lot of effort right the way back to the farms, to the abattoirs, to cutting
07:28plants, to our very own butchers to make sure that it's safe for us to do medium burgers,
07:33medium rare burgers.
07:34For me it's the only way.
07:36Obviously it's completely up to you how you cook your burger.
07:39I'm going to just give this a little scrape now.
07:42You should see a really, really lovely dark brown sear which is exactly what we're after.
07:49And then, like I said, another big load of salt, load of pepper.
07:55So what we've got here is just a reduced, really, really reduced onion relish.
08:02We put a load of brown sugar in here.
08:04This is red onion.
08:06You can use white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar.
08:10You need something in there to kind of counteract all the sugar.
08:13So I remember seeing my dad cook a burger on a barbecue and he would be pressing it down
08:18as hard as he could.
08:20God knows where that's come from, that technique.
08:22It's mental.
08:23You've got all this lovely fat and lovely flavour and moisture in the burger.
08:27You've seared it that side.
08:29So you need to start pressing down now.
08:31You're literally squashing all of the lovely flavour out of the burger.
08:35So you've got to treat it with a bit of love.
08:37You can see it's just about starting to bubble at the top now.
08:39So I'm going to take this off now.
08:41So we're going to leave that burger to rest now.
08:46And you look at it, it's really lovely juices coming off there.
08:48It's nice and medium.
08:49We're going to move over to our chips.
08:51So chips for us are just as important as the burger.
08:55We're never going to serve a frozen chip with our burger.
08:58We've always made them from scratch.
09:00So these are our chips.
09:02So these are homemade in our prep kitchen.
09:06And you notice we put the skin on.
09:08We quite like the kind of rustic look.
09:10And we love the taste of the skin.
09:11You know, nice and crispy.
09:13And we cook these in our prep kitchen.
09:15And then we do like a final fry in the restaurants to get them nice and crispy.
09:20This is our seasoning.
09:22We put this on our chips straight away.
09:24So fresh out of the oil.
09:26And all you've got in here is rosemary.
09:28So fresh rosemary, lemon zest and mould and sea salt.
09:31And you can make this at home really, really easily.
09:33All you need is a pestle and mortar and load of thyme.
09:35And you literally just grind away.
09:39As long as you can.
09:40You can get a really lovely colour, lovely flavour.
09:42And it's a real nice kind of citrusy rosemary smell.
09:45Works amazingly with chips.
09:47So I'm going to drop these in now.
09:49So it's got to be really careful with the fryer.
09:52You can make these on the stove at home.
09:55Just be really careful.
09:56Make sure you've got a thermometer in there.
09:58Because we all know what happens when you heat oil up too hot.
10:01So we've got some lovely resting juices going on in the burger now.
10:04We know that's going to be nice and pink.
10:06So be very gentle.
10:08Pop it on there.
10:10So we've got lettuce, beef.
10:13Chopped beef, not minced.
10:14Red onion relish.
10:16And our toasted bun.
10:18And then what burger would not be complete without some chips.
10:23So we're just going to drain the oil.
10:25Decent amount of rosemary salt on there.
10:30It's really important that you season straight out of the oil.
10:37So you get it nice and coated.
10:45Nice generous portion there.
10:47There we go.
10:48That's our beef burger with rosemary salted chips.
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