80/20 chuck, pan hot as can be, about 2 minutes per side. Good crust and tasted good, but dry inside. What did I do wrong?
Kenji's video here: https://youtu.be/n-uh21ywBkA
by Grrrth_TD
80/20 chuck, pan hot as can be, about 2 minutes per side. Good crust and tasted good, but dry inside. What did I do wrong?
Kenji's video here: https://youtu.be/n-uh21ywBkA
by Grrrth_TD
10 Comments
Brian lagerstroms video/ recipe for these is great and neat impossible to mess up
I think the obvious thing is that you had the heat way too hot. You made a very well done burger, it lost all of the juice, and burned it.
2 minutes on each side is too much. As soon as I flip my onion burgers I put cheese on them. As soon as that cheese melts they come off. That second side is usually 30 seconds maybe
Do you know how many oz your patties were? I do smashburgers often and i think 3-4oz is the sweet spot. Too small and it’ll be easy to smash them too thin and dry them out. Like others have said too, i do 75% of the cook on the initial smashed side. Flip, cheese, melt, pull.
My guess was that your pan was too hot. Kenji crowds his pan so outside of the initial sear the pan would have cooled down quite a bit through the cook process.
I made them on my blackstone a couple of weekends ago and I was cooking them on low heat and even then they cooked very quickly. Don’t go by a timer, eyeball them. The burgers are so thin smashed that it’s actually really difficult to undercook them.
Hey, beyond overcooking the meat, did you rest the patties on a plate before putting them on the buns? I find that a lot of the fat and juices are lost to the plate rather than captured by the bun and toppings.
10 on the stove is for boiling water, and that’s it (steak searing too, but I’m not doing that in the house). A medium high should be fine for these babies
I am a kenji follower. But as someone who spends a pretty good amount of time in different parts of OK, I think he’s wrong on the salting of the onion. An old Okie taught me a trick to pre salt the onions. As in slice them thin and then salt, somewhat liberally and put them in a strainer and let the salt drive the moisture out. We’re talking like an hour before. Then i squeeze them and put them on the grill then after a minute add the burger balls on and smash burgers into the onions. I’ve tried it both ways and won’t go back to not salting ahead of time. It makes a crunchy delicious onion and burger. AND I feel like it should be smashed thinner than what I saw in the video. But that’s the Beauty of cooking. There’s lots of different ways to get to a good result.
I personally use 75/25, 3oz patties and it takes maybe a minute or two and it’s done, talking 30sec-1min on first smash and then a single flip. Turns out perfect and juicy everytime.
Did you use the vacuum packed beef? Like it came in plastic wrap? Even at 20% it can be really dry. Also did you mix salt inside the meat?