Homemade hamburger: how to cook it to perfection
Last Updated on
Total: 15 min Diners: 5-6
Today is celebrated the world day of the hamburger and with what we like in Spain the food and the party we could not miss the celebration to exalt this food that, although not invented on Spanish soil, is so implanted in the Spanish gastronomy that almost passes for a national recipe.
Ingredients
For the hamburger meat
. Minced beef, 1 kg (i) Sesame oil, 2 tablespoons Soy sauce, 4 tablespoons Ground pepper Baby garlic sprouts, 1 or 2 Ground pepper Salt, only if necessary Fresh parsley, 1 sprig
For assembling the burgers
. Burger buns (ii) Cheese (iii) Vegetable Recipes (iv) Sauces (v) Other ingredients (vi)
(i) The best meat for burgers
.The most important thing to prepare a perfect homemade hamburger is to be clear that a hamburger is not a meatball, therefore some ingredients that are usually common in the latter have no place.
Forget about making a hamburger dough with breadcrumbs, flour, eggs or breadcrumbs. A hamburger is minced and seasoned meat that is held together by a fatty element.
Although it is now fashionable to make burgers from almost any type of meat and non-meat, today I’m going to talk about what I consider a canonical hamburger, the one that comes to mind when I hear the word and automatically makes me salivate.
If you want to make the perfect homemade hamburger you have to forget about the trays of minced meat from the supermarket, the best thing to do is to go to a trusted butcher, buy the meat and, if possible, mince it yourself at home. If not, make sure that in the butcher’s shop they have a mincer that is as good as gold.
For me personally, the best meat for hamburgers for having a great quality and a price that is not at all crazy is a mixture that contains 80-85 % of meat of needle of veal without bone and the remaining 15-20 % of bacon or fresh pork jowl, that will contribute an unctuousness to the mixture that will make our hamburgers addictive.
In the list of ingredients I have put the condiments that I like to me for meat, but there are many more combinations, such as salt, pepper, parsley, a little soy sauce, oregano and a little extra virgin olive oil, but there are a thousand combinations and you can even incorporate ingredients such as grated Parmesan, finely chopped ham, bacon, caramelized onion – raw onion to me I do not like-, chorizo crumbs, garlic, …
(ii) The hamburger bun
It must be a soft bun but with enough consistency not to fall apart when you put inside everything that a hamburger usually has. If you are going to buy it I recommend a good hamburger bun made in a good bakery, no matter if it is a rustic bread or brioche type, there is a matter of taste, but if you make burgers at home it is not worth playing with a bad bread.
The size of the bun is also important, it is best that it is of a size very similar to that of the piece of meat.
If you want the play comes out round, it is best to make your own bread. There are very easy recipes with great results like these spelt buns or these others that, without being so, are more like brioches and are very easy to make.
As the burger is a hot sandwich, it will always look better if before assembling the burger we open the bun and lightly toast each of the halves, at least on the inside.
(iii) The cheese for the hamburgers
It has to be a melting cheese, which envelops the piece of meat making it even juicier but without becoming a puddle of grease that will be on repeat throughout the day.
Cheeses such as cheddar, gouda, edam, havarti work well. Some Spanish cheeses also work well, such as a tender Manchego, an Arzúa-Ulloa cheese, a tender Idiazábal, etc…
With other types of cheeses, such as very aged cheeses or blue cheeses, it is advisable to be cautious and if we want to use them to give a touch we should use them in small quantities.
(iv) Vegetable Recipes
We’re used to the whole burger in many bars that, in many cases, are accompanied by an out-of-season tomato slice, a few slices of raw onion and some sad lettuce leaves that do the burger a disservice.
This is not to say that a burger with vegetable accompaniments is not tasty, on the contrary, but I want to insist that everything that accompanies the burger has to be first class. If you want to put a few slices of tomato, it should be a nice red tomato, with smooth and tasty flesh, properly seasoned with a little oil and salt. If you want to put some raw onion rings, leave them for a while before in water with salt and sugar so that they are slightly pickled and lose that fiery flavor that will make your burger taste only onion and that the taste of this will accompany you for hours.
Besides raw Vegetable Recipes, burgers are great with candied Vegetable Recipes such as onions, leeks, peppers, other fresh Vegetable Recipes such as avocados, spinach sprouts, arugula, lamb’s lettuce, etc. Crispy fried onions are also a good ally in bread. There is a wide range of options in the Spanish garden so you can accompany your burger with things that you like.
(v) Sauces
Sauces are usually used to spread on bread to add flavor to the whole thing. The usual ones are ketchup, barbecue sauce, mustard and mayonnaise or mayonnaise, which must be of quality and we should not abuse them, in fact the best option is to serve them separately so that the diner is the one who chooses which ones to use and in what quantities.
(vi) Other ingredients
Other classic ingredients are bacon, grilled eggs, ham, loin. I personally think that putting 800,018 things in burgers doesn’t make them any better. If you want a burger with a lot of apartments with loin or ham, and you’ve worked out an excellent mix of meat, either put an Iberian loin steak or some slices of Iberian ham that are up to par or leave it as it is, but don’t spoil it with a bland slice of industrially marinated loin.
How to make the perfect homemade burger?
The key to getting it is not in the preparation, which is quite simple, but in the choice of ingredients, which is why today’s introduction has been so long.
Step 1
Mix all the ingredients to prepare the patty dough. This is best done in a large bowl with clean hands.
Step 2
Shape the patties. It is convenient that all are the same size and to achieve this we can help us with a scale or anything you have in the kitchen that will serve to separate portions of equal size.
I, as you can see, I usually use a large ladle to serve soup. We shape each of the portions into a ball and flatten them slightly. The ideal is to leave them with a diameter that is one centimeter larger than that of the bread, as they will shrink a little when cooked.
Step 3
We lay out all the ingredients we are going to use to assemble the hamburger to have them at hand so we can start assembling our perfect homemade hamburger as soon as the meat is ready.
Step 4
We cook our perfect homemade hamburger, for this we brush the hamburger with olive oil and put it on the griddle very very hot. The total cooking time depends on the thickness of the meat and the point that we like. In my case, for about 2 centimeters high, they are perfect with 3 minutes on each side. And never make them dizzy by turning them over and over again. If you like the cheese to melt until it seems to be part of the meat, the time to put it is just to turn it over.
While the burgers are grilling we take the opportunity to open and toast the bread.
Step 5
When the burgers are ready, put them inside the bread along with the rest of the ingredients you have chosen. Wrap them in a piece of baking paper and serve immediately.
