B’s Homemade Hamburgers

Helga Glaesel de Blandingjunio 29, 2011

This post is also available in ENGLISH (INGLÉS)

Homemade hamburgers are just… better! When the weather is hot and the days are sunny, there’s nothing like heating up the grill to fire up some burgers. We have a great recipe here for you, as well as tips to guarantee you will get the juiciest, meatiest burger. We have entered rainy season in Guatemala right now, so firing up the grill isn’t a possibility. I will use this downfall to try a new cooking method for my beef patties: broiling them. According to Saveur magazine, this method is the next best thing to grilling them. We’ll show you how.

Of course, you can always just use your indoor grill. But for the sake of experimentation, for this recipe I used the broiling method. How did they come out? Well… they were pretty good, they were juicy and cleanup was easy. ( You use a baking sheet with aluminum foil, so you just toss the foil) but I think next time I will use my indoor grill, just because I like to see the striped burn marks on my patties.

This time, I used all beef. You can mix half ground pork meat and half beef, if you want.

Helga

B’s Homemade Hamburgers

Adapted from here and there, including Saveur, Food Network.
Serves 6-8

Ingredients, for the Beef Patties:
2 lbs lean ground beef
1 tablespoon black pepper
3 tablespoons salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped white onion
1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons steak sauce (such as A1)
1 egg

Ingredients, Hamburger Toppings:
Greenleaf lettuce
Tomatoes, thinly sliced
12 Bacon strips
White onion rings from 1 or 2 whole onions
Monterrey Jack Cheese,sliced
Emmenthal Cheese, sliced

Ingredients, Dressings:
Ketchup
Chipotle Mayonnaise
Dijon Mustard

8 Hamburger buns (large ones)

Procedure:

First, prepare the bacon and onion rings:

Cook bacon in an ungreased pan, until crispy. Set aside
Use the grease that the bacon left on the pan to cook the onion rings
Cook until they are brown, about 5 minutes. Set aside

For the beef:

Preheat your oven’s broiler on High. Set the top rack to very top. (first position from top to bottom)
Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with aluminum foil and spraying it with cooking spray.
Mix all the ingredients listed for the beef patties.
Before you form your burgers, take a look at the size of your buns. You don’t want to have a small, fat burger floating around in the middle of the bun. Take into account that when you cook them, they will shrink.
A good standard size is to scoop out the meat with an ice cream scoop. Or in this case, we have 2 lbs of beef just divide into 8 equal pieces to get 8 1/4 lbs burgers.
* Form a ball with your hands
* Press it down to the desired thickness and circumference
* Since large burgers tend to puff up in the middle, make an indentation in the middle with your thumb or the back of a tablespoon.
Arrange burgers on prepared baking sheet and place it in the oven
Cook for 3 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet. Cook for another 3 minutes
Carefully, take the pan out of the oven and flip the burgers.
Repeat the same cooking time on the other side. 3 minutes, rotate baking sheet, 3 more minutes.

Tip for Hamburger buns!:
A good tip is that you should brown the inside halves of your hamburger buns. Do this by adding a little butter to a hot pan, place the buns with the cut side down, and brown. Keep an eye on them! They brown quickly, it should take only a bout 1 minute or 2. This will pevent the bread from getting soggy.

Assembly: