Speaker 1: It's always grilling season. I wanted to talk about burgers,
Speaker 1: something seemingly so simple, but technique and ingredients are imperative
Speaker 1: because of its simplicity. When you're making something complex, a
Speaker 1: lot of times it can, you know, kind of hide
Speaker 1: behind all the other ingredients and the complexity of it.
Speaker 1: But the more simple something is that you're going to
Speaker 1: cook or make, the more right on the money has
Speaker 1: to be. And I hear this probably more than any
Speaker 1: other thing. Pizza dough is probably up there somewhere, but
Speaker 1: more than any other thing. I'm asked about the perfect burger,
Speaker 1: which lends one to ask, or leads one to ask,
Speaker 1: what is perfect to you? Do you like a thick
Speaker 1: burger a thin burger? Do you like thin patties? Like
Speaker 1: a smash burger? But you want two of them? My
Speaker 1: brother cannot eat a patty. He thinks it's gross. I know, right,
Speaker 1: he just can't. He won't have like a double cheeseburger
Speaker 1: or something. Yes, I know your next question is gonna
Speaker 1: be even at in and out it's a single like
Speaker 1: he doesn't go give me a double doubt like the
Speaker 1: rest of us humans, and that because that's not his jam.
Speaker 1: But why is it gross, Like is it just too
Speaker 1: much meat? That's something gross something. But I mean even
Speaker 1: but you would think, well, what about a smash burger?
Speaker 1: But even a smash burger bothers him. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I don't do therapy on this show, whole other show.
Speaker 1: But so I want to talk about these. So whatever
Speaker 1: your perfect burger is, let's go through some of the
Speaker 1: things you're gonna need. The biggest problem people will say
Speaker 1: is my burgers turn out to dry. So there's two
Speaker 1: things that can go wrong when your burgers go dry,
Speaker 1: wrong meat ratio or wrong meat altogether, or cooked too long,
Speaker 1: just overcooked. So the right meat to use. And I'm
Speaker 1: sorry for those of you who are like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make a chicken burger, it's going to be dry.
Speaker 1: Probably you're opting for ground beef with good fat content,
Speaker 1: and you can't get that anywhere else than an eighty
Speaker 1: twenty ratio. That means eighty percent lean twenty percent fat,
Speaker 1: which is the exact opposite of my body makeup. Strangely enough,
Speaker 1: if you're playing the home game. So for a juicy burger,
Speaker 1: which my boy loves, Daddy, make me one of your
Speaker 1: juicy cheeseburgers, you need an eighty twenty ratio. So if
Speaker 1: you're going lean on the meat, you will not get this.
Speaker 1: You just won't. You gotta avoid lean meat. That's you know,
Speaker 1: lean meat. You put it if you're mixing it into
Speaker 1: your spaghetti sauce or you're doing something like that. That's
Speaker 1: when you go for the lean stuff. But don't do
Speaker 1: it when you're doing a burger when it's the star
Speaker 1: of the show, right, So avoid that because it's gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, give you dry burgers. The second thing is
Speaker 1: that when you're cooking the burger, people tend to overcook them. Yes,
Speaker 1: you want them at a certain dunness. The better quality
Speaker 1: of the meat, the looser you can be with the heat.
Speaker 1: I kind of hesitate saying this because reality is you
Speaker 1: need to know what you're doing. The reason why you
Speaker 1: can have a rare or medium rare steak and then
Speaker 1: at a restaurant when you ask for a burger medium rare,
Speaker 1: they said, okay, that's this, And then there's a little
Speaker 1: thing on the menu that says having hamburger meat less
Speaker 1: than one hundred and sixty five degrees and be dangerous
Speaker 1: is because when you grind a steak to make hamburger meat.
Speaker 1: The steak has the most bacteria on the outside and
Speaker 1: it's most preserved on the inside. Once you grind it,
Speaker 1: they all mate with each other and now all the
Speaker 1: bacteria is throughout the entirety. That is why hamburgers should
Speaker 1: be cooked to one sixty five. So what I do
Speaker 1: to keep them from drying out is I slowly. If
Speaker 1: it's a thicker burger, I put it on high heat.
Speaker 1: I'm searing that while I'm cooking it, turning it over
Speaker 1: and then bringing it. I bring it up to a
Speaker 1: top rack off of the direct heat, and that's where
Speaker 1: I put my cheese on it, drop the lid and
Speaker 1: melt the cheese. But what I'm doing is that heat
Speaker 1: is going to continue to travel from the outside to
Speaker 1: the inside of the meat as I take it off,
Speaker 1: and as I put it on to the plate, it
Speaker 1: will continue to cook and then it will get to
Speaker 1: a nice juicy state. Rather than cooking it to one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five and then taking off, it's going
Speaker 1: to go up to about one hundred and seventy five
Speaker 1: after that. So that's one of the things that you
Speaker 1: have to battle with is the keeping those juices in there.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I'll talk about the tricks and
Speaker 1: tips you need to actually make those patties. There are
Speaker 1: a trick to it. My mom makes great patties, always have,
Speaker 1: probably because with seven kids you couldn't spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time on them. And that's really the tip that
Speaker 1: we'll get into to get those patties perfect for grilling
Speaker 1: or roasting. If you're you know, if you're putting them
Speaker 1: under the broiler whatever it is on pans here, man,
Speaker 1: the heat gets up and it's just these lovely Southern
Speaker 1: California days, great for grilling. Been doing a lot of grilling,
Speaker 1: enjoying that. I hope you're doing the same. I want
Speaker 1: to remind you a couple of things. One mo Kelly
Speaker 1: is on YouTube every night during his show. You've got
Speaker 1: to check it out. There are so many times that
Speaker 1: I'm either in my home office or in my home
Speaker 1: shop and I have them on and it's exactly like
Speaker 1: sitting as I have done. I've sat with him during
Speaker 1: his show before. It's exactly like doing that. But you're
Speaker 1: at home. So if you're in your Tony's or something,
Speaker 1: no one's going to have a problem if you do
Speaker 1: that live with mo. There's a problem, trust me. I
Speaker 1: found that out the hard way. But it's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun and it's an interesting way to listen and
Speaker 1: enjoy the program. All right. I also want to remind
Speaker 1: you that the twelfth Saturday, July twelfth, write that down,
Speaker 1: join me at Wild Fork Foods in Santa Clarita. That's
Speaker 1: right off the Magic Mountain Parkway. There in store at
Speaker 1: Wild Fork Foods, and if you've never been to one, man,
Speaker 1: it's spectacular. You can get all kinds of rare meats
Speaker 1: and things like that, as well as your classics, but
Speaker 1: they also have pre prepared aired stuff. A unique experience,
Speaker 1: to say the least when shopping. But it's a summer
Speaker 1: grilling season. We'll be doing giveaways broadcasting live right there
Speaker 1: at two four one seventy five Magic Mountain Parkway. I
Speaker 1: would love to meet you. I'm going to bring some
Speaker 1: swag to give away, some Folk Report swag as well.
Speaker 1: So July twelfth on Magic Mountain Parkway at Wild Fork,
Speaker 1: So write that down. Talking about Technique of the Week
Speaker 1: and burger patties. I know it seems simple, but man,
Speaker 1: if you can't get a burger patty right then people
Speaker 1: will hate your guts. There, I said it. That's your
Speaker 1: life is going to be people hating you and talking
Speaker 1: bad behind your back. There is nothing more sad to me.
Speaker 1: And someone makes bad burgers because you know those people
Speaker 1: you invited, they may be smiling now and all of that,
Speaker 1: and you can tell they're the ones that are putting,
Speaker 1: you know, three times the amount of condiments on the
Speaker 1: burger that they should be because that's how bad it is.
Speaker 1: And they're going to talk bad about you. So it
Speaker 1: should be a point of pride. When you make the paddies.
Speaker 1: You want to keep the ground beef cold. You want
Speaker 1: to keep it cold until you're ready to make those patties.
Speaker 1: You want cold hands too, and it's one of the
Speaker 1: people that one of the things people do, and one
Speaker 1: of the tips that I've seen is they keep a
Speaker 1: bowl of ice water next to them and you can
Speaker 1: actually put your hands in the ice water when you're
Speaker 1: packing them. The key to this is you want to
Speaker 1: make them, you know, quickly. You do not want to
Speaker 1: overwork the meat. You want to gently shape them. This
Speaker 1: will help you get little pockets in there that will
Speaker 1: hold the juices if you make it too dense. You're
Speaker 1: going to get a dry burger. There's nowhere for that
Speaker 1: juice to kind of hang out. Also, when you have
Speaker 1: your hands are naturally warm, and they are going to
Speaker 1: heat the fat. And that's why when you make patties
Speaker 1: for too long with too warm hands, you come and
Speaker 1: you you pull your hands away, and your hands are
Speaker 1: covered in fat, even chunks of fat. And those chunks
Speaker 1: you've actually pulled because you've ground They've ground the meat together,
Speaker 1: so you got the eighty twenty meat, and that twenty
Speaker 1: percent fat is now getting onto your hands, which makes
Speaker 1: the patty have less than twenty percent fat, and that
Speaker 1: will make them. You want patties to be slightly larger
Speaker 1: than the buns because they're gonna shrink during cooking. Some
Speaker 1: people do this. I do this on occasion, depending on
Speaker 1: if I'm hand making my patties means I'm not using
Speaker 1: anything else to create their shape. Then I will put
Speaker 1: a little divt, a little divot in the center of
Speaker 1: the burger, and that way, when it can constricts because
Speaker 1: of the heat, it'll push that divot out rather than
Speaker 1: making it look like a football. Some people will put
Speaker 1: when they go to put it on the grill they'll
Speaker 1: put a piece of ice on. It does similar. It
Speaker 1: keeps it very cool on the inside and the top
Speaker 1: so that it doesn't constrict. As fast. As far as
Speaker 1: seasoning goes, salt and pepper is great. You really don't
Speaker 1: need anything else. I'll tell you something I'm a fan
Speaker 1: of though, and this was because of my mom. Is
Speaker 1: lowery seasoning salt. Love that on a burger. I just
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm mostly a salt and pepper guy,
Speaker 1: Like when it comes to meat, I'm like, hey, just
Speaker 1: you want it to taste like the meat, not a seasoning.
Speaker 1: But I do love me some lowery seasoning salt and
Speaker 1: it goes great on a patty. So you don't want
Speaker 1: to salt too early. Can you know? The thing about
Speaker 1: salt is it pulls moisture out, so you do it
Speaker 1: right before it goes on, and you want it on
Speaker 1: a hot pan or grill. You get that sears. It's
Speaker 1: almost the opposite of cooking a steak, where you're doing
Speaker 1: a reverse sere. High heat, does that great crust, Oh
Speaker 1: that crunchy, lovely crust. And avoid pressing down on the patties.
Speaker 1: But as far as flipping them, flip them, however, once
Speaker 1: you want. People say, oh, you should only flip it once.
Speaker 1: If that's how you grill them, that's fine, but there
Speaker 1: is no real difference there is like people. Matter of fact,
Speaker 1: science has shown that the more you flip meat, it
Speaker 1: actually rotates the juices, just like a rotisserie does on
Speaker 1: the chicken, and can actually keep it more flavorful. But
Speaker 1: the sear gets there because of the heat, right, And
Speaker 1: if you flip a bunch of times, you won't get
Speaker 1: that seer because the grate that you're cooking on or
Speaker 1: the pan never gets time to come back to heat
Speaker 1: high heat again because that burger every time you flip
Speaker 1: it is stealing heat from there. So, for instance, when
Speaker 1: I cook burgers, if I'm cooking for burgers because my
Speaker 1: wife doesn't eat red meat, I'm doing it just for
Speaker 1: my son and me, and so I will make room
Speaker 1: so that when I flip them after the first year,
Speaker 1: I'm flipping them not back to where they were, but
Speaker 1: onto a new part of the grate so that they
Speaker 1: get that full heat again. And that works nicely. And
Speaker 1: then if I need to flip them over again, the
Speaker 1: part that I didn't flip them on before is now
Speaker 1: hot enough to do that. So those are some things.
Speaker 1: Let them rest a few minutes to really what you
Speaker 1: want them to do is to come to one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty degrees in the center. Is when they've rested enough,
Speaker 1: that goes down. So they've gone from their high heat
Speaker 1: down to one twenty, and you know they're not going
Speaker 1: to squeeze out