Hamburger Perfection
Jeffrey Steingarten is a food columnist for Vogue magazine. Since
some of our readers don’t get Vogue we are including his hamburger
recipe here. The burgers are described as “mouth wateringly
insane”.

The perfect hamburger
The meat patty must be profoundly beefy in flavor, mouthwateringly
browned on the outside, and succulent (a combination of juicy and
tender) on the inside.

The bread or bun should not interfere with any of these virtues. It
should be soft, mild, and unassertive; its job is to absorb every last
drop of savory juice trickling from the meat while keeping the burger
more or less in one piece and your hands dry.

1. Chill Out: "Before grinding chunks of beef, before forming a
hamburger, and before cooking a hamburger, make sure that the beef is
ice cold. Otherwise, the fat may melt and separate from the lean."

2. Grind or Else: Either grind your own meat or have a trusted
butcher grind it for you for safety reasons. Otherwise cook it until
it is well done. "Never buy supermarket ground beef unless the
butcher there grinds it specially for you." If you have any questions
about the safety of the chopped meat you've just bought: "Drop the
meat into a pot of boiling water for a minute, fish it out, and pat it
dry. It'll turn gray, but only on the outside, and this will get
ground into the rest of the meat and vanish."

3. Fluff that Stuff: "When forming a hamburger, don't compress the
meat. The fluffier, the better. A raw burger should be airy and full
of tiny holes that can hold the juices released during cooking, when
the fat melts and water is squeezed out from between the proteins."
"The gently gathered ground beef in a good hamburger has a delicate
quality quite unlike even a tender steak."

4. Just Add Water: Adding the liquid is literally the secret sauce
that will make any burger sing. Adding a tablespoon and a half of
liquid to the ground meat immeasurably improves the burger. Either
cream or water produces a superior, succulent, juicy, crumbly burger.

5. Season Well: "Don't salt hamburger meat either before or after it
is ground. Just before you cook the burger, liberally sprinkle salt on
both sides of each patty, and press it lightly. After they're cooked,
sprinkle with freshly ground pepper."

6. Flip Side: If you flip a burger or a steak every fifteen to 30
seconds, the outside surface will get nicely browned while the inside
stays relatively cool.

7. No Pressu "While cooking your hamburger never press down on the
patty with your spatula or with anything else." Also broiling from
above is much less likely to dry out the burger.

8. Buns: The best hamburger buns are Pepperidge Farm's Farmhouse
Sandwich Rolls (not the hamburger buns). They do need to be
compressed a bit before using.

9. The Meat: Most of New York City's great hamburgers are made with a
blend of chuck (specifically the chuck flap) and brisket. Some chefs
ask that short rib or hanger steak be thrown in. One recipe calls for
a blend of hanger steak, short rib, and brisket. Another blend is two
parts chuck, two parts boneless short rib, and one part brisket. Fat
is extremely important to excellence in the hamburger arts because
most of the beefy flavor in beef is in the fat."