You know how a good burger should taste, but do you know how to make beef burgers at home? The good news is that you don’t need to be a culinary wizard to pull it off, but you doneed the best burger recipe and the right technique.
At Ribs & Burgers we know our stuff, so for advice on how to make the best burger at home follow our winning recipe!
THE BEST BURGER RECIPE
INGREDIENTS
Prepare your ingredients before you begin cooking. These will differ depending on your choice of flavour and seasoning, but the main ingredients you will need are:
- Freshly ground, organic minced beef
- Burger buns
- Cheese
- Onion
- Lettuce
- Tomato
- Pickles
- BBQ sauce/mustard/your own mix of herbs and spices
- Salt and pepper
- Olive oil & vegetable oil
METHOD
It’s all in the beef
First thing’s first – the beef. You can’t make a good burger without good beef; it’s fundamental.
If you’re cooking your burger from scratch you should source organic freshly ground mince from a premium butcher. The price tag will be higher but the flavour will be better.
At Ribs & Burgers we use juicy and tender 150g Angus beef patties in our beef burgers. But for the burger connoisseurs out there who really want to up the ante in the kitchen, we recommend Wagyu beef – the most premium beef money can buy. Our R&B Wagyu Big Cheese burger is something special, and you can really taste the difference.
Get mixing
Once you have your prime mince it’s time to get down to business. Put the mince in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper. This is a good time to add any other ingredients you like – finely chopped onions that have been lightly fried with butter make for a nice addition.
Once you have added everything into the bowl, start mixing the ingredients together with your hands. You may want to blend the mixture, but doing it manually is more effective.
To make the patties, take some mince from the mixture and gently form a ball by tossing it from hand to hand. Flatten out the patties into disc shapes (you may choose to use a cookie cutter here), ensuring that the width is the size of your burger buns (approximately 10 cm in diameter) and the thickness is between 3/4 to 1 inch.
Be careful to handle your patties as little as possible to preserve the flavour!
Heat it up!
To make the best beef burgers, it’s all about the cooking technique. At Ribs & Burgers we cook our patties in a heavy-based skillet using a practised method, but at home you can cook on a barbecue to achieve that flame grilled flavour.
If you’re opting for the barbecue method, preheat the grill with a medium high flame and oil the grate with vegetable oil. Wait for the oil to get hot and then add the patties.
The key is to not play with the patties while they cook. Don’t prod them, press down on them or flip them. Grill the patties for around 5 minutes on each side. You’ll know it’s time to flip the patty when it becomes unstuck from the grill. If you want your burgers a little more well done, cook them for longer – between 6 and 8 minutes on each side will do it.
Top it off
When cooked, move the patties to the cool side of the grill. This is the time to add cheese.
In our menu we use an American cheese, a Swiss cheese (for that nutty taste) and a delicious aged cheddar from the UK. Once you’ve selected your cheese of choice, put it on top of your patty and wait for it to melt.
Toast the buns
The bun you use for your burgers is totally up for you. We use milk buns at Ribs & Burgers, but you can use brioche or ciabatta instead. Lightly toast the buns on a hot non-stick pan or on the barbecue.
Build your burger
It’s now time to build your burger. Wash the lettuce and pick the leaves, slice the onions into rings (we love Spanish onions) and slice the tomato.
Sauce the ‘heel’ and the ‘crown’ of the burger (the bottom and top bun, respectively) with your choice of sauce – BBQ, tomato or Dijon mustard. Our Aunty Joan’s pink sauce – an irresistible cocktail of herbs and spices – is our secret weapon.
Layer the heel with the fresh lettuce leaf, juicy tomato slices, onion, pickles and the patty. On our Ribs & Burgers Aussie burger we add beetroot, pineapple, Swiss cheese, bacon, egg, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles with BBQ and Aunty Joan’s pink sauce. Incorporating the flavours of Australia is a real winner.
And voilà!
Once you’ve built your burger and sealed the stack with the crown, it’s ready to tuck in! We recommend serving the burger with lightly seasoned fries or sweet potato fries for that taste explosion.
Feeling lazy?
If cooking your own burgers isn’t for you, remember you can order a tasty burger from Ribs & Burgers or visit us in store. This way you can enjoy a delicious burger at home and don’t have to do the washing up!
