Transcription
You might be asking yourself, why in the world am I watching another air fryer hamburger video? There are tons of them out there. I'm sure you've seen some, but this one is going to be different, I promise. Welcome to The Salted Pepper, where we cook for real life, using real food, and we keep it real simple.
Today, I'm going to share with you some tips and tricks so that you can have perfect hamburgers. And guess what? These will work whether or not you're going to use your air fryer, or you're going to use your grill, or even your stovetop. So, these tips are gonna help you make delicious, perfectly formed, and perfectly cooked burgers. I promise.
All right, the first thing we're gonna do is talk about the meat choice. So, I'm using ground chuck, 80/20, and that's what I like to use for my burgers when I do an all-beef burger. However, you could use pork. You can use a leaner beef and then add in some ground pork for some extra fat. And don't get the lean kind. You really want some fat in your burger so that they stay nice and juicy. We're going to talk a little bit more about that a little later in the video, but for right now, let's just focus on what kind of meat you're going to use. Don't get ground sirloin. Don't do it. You will have the toughest, driest, ickiest burgers, no matter how you cook them. It's horrible. Jeff made that mistake. I cooked these up one time from ground sirloin. I was like, "What is this?" It was horrible. So, do yourself a favor, get 80/20, and try to find ground chuck. You're gonna be super happy with that.
All right, next thing to do, and I know people are going to be screaming at me for this one. Don't guess when you're making your hamburger patties. Weigh them out. Yes, it's an extra step. However, if you're making, especially if you're making more than one, you want them to cook evenly. You want them to be ready at the same time. And the way that they're gonna cook nice and even and and be completely cooked through perfectly is if they are the same size. So that's what I'm gonna do right now.
What is the perfect size for a burger? Well, I'm so glad you asked, because that varies depending on how big your appetite is. However, if you want a really delicious, juicy, sick burger like you would get at a restaurant, you want to start out with six ounces of ground meat. Okay? So, each one of these is going to be six ounces. Now, sometimes I'll do four ounces if I'm going to do little smaller slider varieties. That's perfectly fine, but they tend to cook really fast and they dry out some. So, if I'm gonna have that big juicy burger on a bun, definitely, definitely using six ounces. You can do a little bit more. So, if you have a big appetite, you can go all the way up to eight ounces if you want.
All right, here is six ounces. And now the next thing that we're gonna do, I'm gonna put this over to the side because I know that this was 12 ounces total, so my other bit of ground beef will be six ounces there. Now, what is the next mistake people do with their ground meat when they're forming the burgers? They add an egg. They add seasonings. They add all kinds of things. Don't do that. We're not making meatloaf, we're making a hamburger. Okay? And a hamburger, the best way to season it is after you form the patty. And there's a scientific reason for this. When you add in seasoning, especially salt, there's a chemical reaction that happens with the meat, binds things together, and makes it tougher. Okay? So, don't do that. Definitely season afterwards. And I'm using equal part salt and pepper. That's my go-to seasoning for burgers. You could use any kind of seasoning you like, any combination. You could add in garlic and onion powder and all those kind of delicious things. Just season the outside.
All right, next thing, how to form it. Okay? Yes, we do want to kind of combine our meat a little bit. You don't want to see the strands, you know, as you see them when they're in the package where they come out of the meat grinder. You don't want to see that, but you don't want to overwork it either. Again, we're not making meatloaf. We want a nice tender burger when we bite into it. It just sort of comes apart and then, you know, quickly like falls apart in our mouth. That's what we want. So, just a little brief shaping with your hands until you can no longer see any of the lines, but you haven't overworked the meat.
Then, the next step, use a burger press. Okay? Now, you might not have one. It's all right. I love using it. If you don't have a burger press, what you can do is put your ball of meat down, press it down, but then take something flat like a plate, press it down even more. So, the next mistake that people make all the time is they form their burgers just like that. It looks good, right? Looks really good. However, what's going to happen is it's going to shrink up and it's going to puff up a little bit, but it's going to shrink up and it's going to be teeny tiny on your bun. So, when you start out, you want your burger to be shaped a little bit bigger than your bun, probably about a quarter inch bigger than the bun you're going to put it on. Okay? That's going to make for a perfectly sized burger to bun ratio, which is super important and overlooked a lot of times.
All right, I'm going to use my handy dandy burger press here because it makes it really simple and I get nice even burgers. All right, there we go. All right, that looks good. So, what we see here is a nice burger. Okay? On this side, there's a little dimple in it. That's done by my burger press. If you don't have a burger press, take a spoon or your thumb and put a little dimple down in the center. Okay? That helps them not puff up. But that's not the only thing that helps them not puff up. So, I'm gonna get into that in just a minute. Let me make the other burger and season it up with salt and pepper and get our air fryer preheated. I'm gonna use the air fryer to cook these because I'm indoors and believe it or not, I don't have a grill anymore, unfortunately. And I love the way the air fryer burgers turn out. Okay? So, I'm gonna get this preheated.
[Music]
All right, I'm on air fry. I'm on 390. I want to be up, actually, I want to be down to 375 for this recipe. 20 minutes is fine. It doesn't really matter. We're just preheating. I want to preheat for about 10 minutes. Now, if you're using an oven or or because you can bake your burgers too if you want to, it's no problem. If you're using an oven or an air fryer, this is one of the times that I don't recommend preheating on the hottest setting. And the reason being is my next tip. Okay? And that is because another thing that causes your burgers to ball up and, you know, you know what I'm talking about because we've all had them at picnics, right? Where you, you get your, your burger and it looks like this, and then you can't put your condiments on. They're all falling all over the place because the burger puffed up like a hockey puck. You know what I'm talking about. Okay? The reason that happens, not just because we didn't put the little dimple in, but because of steam building on the inside, sort of puffing, and then as the outside of the burger cooks, it shrinks. So, we've got steam from the middle and shrinkage, and all of a sudden we have this burger ball. Okay? We don't want that. So, we don't want our air fryer too hot when we start out. Now, is it the end of the world if you preheat on the hottest setting? No, it's not. I've done it. But you definitely don't want to cook on the hottest setting. So, 375 is what we're going to preheat on and cook them.
All right, so we preheated for about 10 minutes. And what I did was gather my bun and all the condiments that I want to put on my burger. And I'll go over the bun in just a second because that is the second most important thing after you choose your meat that you're going to use for your burgers. All right, now that the air fryer is preheated, and this would go for the grill too, you're going to add your burgers right there. And you want the little dimple side up for now. Put those in. Now, these are going to be kind of close together, but it's going to be perfectly fine. Okay? Don't worry about it. All right, so now we close the air fryer. And then my next tip is, don't flip and don't press down on your burgers. Okay? Whether you're grilling them or using your air fryer, let them cook for a good five to seven minutes on that one side before you even try to remove them. I am sure that you have at some point made a burger, gone to flip it, and it's just falling apart all over the place. Super frustrating. And that is because, number one, it wasn't formed well enough. That's number one. But number two, it wasn't cooked long enough on the one side. When the burger is cooked correctly on that one side, it will release easily and you'll be able to flip it all in one piece. So, don't open up the lid of the air fryer or the grill for at least five minutes, and don't try to flip until that. Okay?
All right, next thing, let's get into the bun. This is probably one of my biggest pet peeves of all time. When you are served a burger with the wrong kind of bun, you know the kind I'm talking about. You have a really juicy, substantial burger, and once you put your condiments on it and your lettuce, tomato, whatever you want, you go to pick it up and it's, the bun is just falling apart. It is not equipped to handle the burger. Okay? This is true of most hamburger buns that you buy at the grocery store. Skip them. They make great little sandwiches, but they don't make good hamburger buns. Instead, you want to look for a brioche or even a pretzel roll is good. Okay? And you want to pick one that, again, is about a quarter of an inch smaller than what your burger starts off with. Okay? Because your burger's gonna shrink quite a bit. In fact, it shrinks so much, we're only gonna end up with four ounce burgers here, even though we started off with six. Okay?
All right, next thing, this is another little tip. Okay? Is be lazy. Dump your mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, relish, dill pickle, whatever, into one bowl and mix it up.
[Applause]
It's going to taste just as delicious, if not better, on your burger than if you slathered with mayo and then ketchup and just built this all up. It's going to be amazing, and it is super easy, and you can make it ahead of time, and it's a great fry sauce as well.
All right, so it's been just about six minutes. Let's take a peek and see how they're doing. Please, please, no burger balls. Right? No burger balls. No burger balls. They look good. They look really, really good. All right, now the reason why I say flip, even though technically you don't have to flip, is because I like to get some of this, um, top here. And my air fryer does a better job at the cooking the bottom. And I see like this pink stuff coming out, which is not blood. It's myoglobin and proteins and things. But I like to flip because I don't want to see that when I serve my burger. So, now we are going to flip it over. Oh, these look so good. Oh my gosh. They're perfect. All right, now we're going to cook another four minutes for a total of 10 minutes. So, five to seven minutes on the one side, flip, and then go the remaining 10 minutes on the other side. And my next tip is, don't poke it with a thermometer right now. Okay? You can do that later, but not right now. Because what's gonna happen if you poke it too soon, you're gonna have all these glorious juices come out and dry out your burger. Okay? So, don't do that. Leave it alone. Trust the timing. If you make the burgers, they're six ounces, and you form them to where they're about three-quarters of an inch thick, this is going to be your timing in an air fryer. Okay? Now, we will take a temperature. So, no worries. I like my burgers medium. But if you like yours well done, you can just cook another two minutes and it's going to be perfectly fine. Okay?
All right, there we go. They look amazing. Oh my gosh. Look at that. Look at that. No burger balls. Oh, I love it. All right, now I just scraped this stuff off here and throw my bun right on in and close the air fryer and go the rest of the four minutes to toast my bun because I like them toasted.
All right, let's take a temperature and see where we are now. Medium would be somewhere between 140, 150. Medium well, which is okay with me, as as well, is somewhere between 155, 150, 160. And then well done, it's 165. Now, the USDA does recommend that you cook your burgers to an internal temp of 165. That is because there's bacteria sometimes on the outside of the beef, and when it's ground up, it can be mixed in. So, that's what they recommend. I don't like mine cooked that done. In fact, mine are reading 159, which is at the upper limit of how I like them. So, I could have taken them off a minute earlier. Let's go ahead and take another temperature. This one, and that one is a little bit less, 153. Yep. So, we're good to go for what I like. If you wanted yours 165, definitely just take them two more minutes and you're gonna be fine. Maybe even another minute, okay? If you want them less done than that, then obviously cut your time down. Leave your temperature the same for the best results so that you don't have that, those puffy burgers.
All right, let's take a peek here. Whoa, they're done too. Look at that. That was quick. I might have overdone that too, talking too much. All right, turn this off. We are done. Oh, I cannot wait. I don't have any lettuce. I normally like lettuce on mine. Guess what else I forgot? I forgot to melt the cheese on top. How silly am I? Well, what do we do when we don't remember to melt the cheese? How about we just stick it in here for a second? I won't. Well, we'll just, how about we just stick it right back in and close the lid while I dress the burger? Okay, things happen.
[Music]
All right, I don't, I didn't even turn it on because it is hot enough in there. All right, a little bit of my special lazy sauce, and then I will put a little bit of tomato. Move that. Jeff can take that to work. Oh my gosh, I'm so excited. Although my bun is quite toasted. That's melted enough. Look. Oh my gosh. Perfectly sized burger. So, the burger is just where it needs to be for the bun. So, we're gonna have great bun to burger ratio. Not too bready, not too burgury. It's perfect. And let's see how close are we to the four ounces that I said we were gonna get to after cooking. Let's see. 4.4. Okay. Oh, actually, it was on 0.1, so 4.3. So, pretty darn close, right? So, you do lose two ounces in juices, fat, things like that. All right, here we go. Oh my gosh, the perfect burger. It's amazing.