Burgers. What not to do…

Who doesn’t love a really juicy, flame-grilled smokey burger? (Vegetarians aside…)

The perfect burger (for me, at least, I can’t speak for you) is one that’s got a really perfect char on the outside, with that almost burnt crust – but then a result of the way it’s cooked means it’s perfectly juicy and succulent on the inside.

That, then topped with some nice smoked cheese, maybe some gherkins, and surrounded by a blend of ketchup, mayo and mustard, with good bit of crispy lettuce. If you’re going all out, some nice chargrilled onions too.

Wrap that in a bun (I actually personally prefer a regular bun, rather than sourdough or brioche) and you’ve got a winning combination.

So, I’ve got a winning recipe now – which I actually get my butcher to make for me because… well, have you ever made your own mince? My god the mess. And the effort cleaning up after. It was fun for a while, but the novelty wore off when I realised my butcher (who’s amazing, will get lots of mentions throughout this blog) simply created the perfect blend and started selling them.

But… what if you just want a nice steak burger, and your nearest stop is a supermarket? First, I’d say go the extra mile (find a decent butcher – there are more out there than you realise!). But when I first started doing this, I thought I’d found a genius way to make a steak burger on a decent budget.

So, as you can see, I’d look for the stuff that’d been marked down, and freeze it. Then, when I had enough, maybe 1kg total steak, I’d chop it up ready for cooking. I didn’t have a mincer but I really wanted to make the burgers there and then. So I used a food processor to blitz the meat. I let it blitz some of it to a real puree texture, and some really chunky. Then I mixed all that together with a pinch of salt and pepper and fried it up on a cast iron griddle.

Yeah, it was OK. It was tastier than the usual mince you’d buy from the supermarket, as I’d got mostly sirloin.

But I wanted better than OK. So I started looking into getting my own mincer, and also started taking notes of how much steak I’d use against how much fat. As I later learned, when I got chatting to my now regular butcher, you need a LOT of fat. Way more than you think.

I’ll post again with the methods I use now! In the meantime… check out your local butcher. If you’re in the vicinity of Southend on Sea, check out Harrisons Butchers in Leigh… but more on that another time.