Burgers Should Be Wide
Now that summer is here, it is time for me to voice this complaint. I just cooked a burger, with cheese, tomato, onion, and pickles. It's all over the floor. Why? Because the manufacturers of these buns and frozen patties made them very thick with a small circumference. Burgers should be wide. Not narrow, not tall, not Dagwood. Wide! Wide is stable. Wide is able to provide a platform for tasty goodness to stay on securely. As you cook a burger patty, it shrinks in circumference and thickens dramatically. A raw burger patty should be a thin sheet when it goes on the grill, or it will become a meatball. Eating it will be a juggling act. The best burger of all time is the Burger King Whopper. Other restaurants think they're making "the best burger", but they're ruining it.
Comments
desfontaines on Jun. 14, 2011 7:17 PM
Thinner burgers cook faster, too! Less time tending cooking food, less fuel used to cook them, and you get to eat sooner!
tlatoani on Jun. 14, 2011 7:17 PM
I'm now going to criticize, as an antidote to your clear error. The best burgers are thick and juicy. If yours become a meatball when they start thick, it's because you don't know the secret: if you shape the raw burger so it's thinner in the center, kind of like a red blood cell, it won't do that.
matt-arnold on Jun. 14, 2011 7:19 PM
Clever!
I don't mind thick, so long as it's wide.
tlatoani on Jun. 14, 2011 7:22 PM
That's what she said!
But seriously, who the hell wants a thin burger? On top of everything else, it'll be overcooked.
atdt1991 on Jun. 14, 2011 7:24 PM
Exactly. Two things that thicker burgers have in advantage - less manipulation, which means a tender bite, and it's easier to get just a little crust on the exterior and still have a soft (medium, for me) interior. Uniform burgers are alright, but don't hit the spot the same way for me.
pstscrpt on Jun. 15, 2011 4:06 PM
I wouldn't trust a burger less than well done unless you grind it yourself or know it's irradiated. The whole thing is surface area.
atdt1991 on Jun. 15, 2011 4:17 PM
You don't think that's excessive?
Of course eating a burger is a calculated risk. Offering burgers on your menu is also a calculated risk. If you're worried about E. Coli, you might as well look at spinach, sprouts, or anything grown on a farm. If you are looking to limit your risk so severely, you might as well not eat anything not grown by your own self.
I personally have no immune disorders and out of the many hundreds of burgers I have eaten, I've had no major issues. I'll continue to go by my personal experience.
crywolf on Jun. 14, 2011 9:05 PM
A burger from frozen meat will never be as good as one from fresh meat. That's probably part of the problem.
matt-arnold on Jun. 14, 2011 9:18 PM
It will never be as wide? All they have to do is make it wider. I don't understand.
crywolf on Jun. 14, 2011 9:55 PM
In my experience, frozen meat doesn't hold on to moisture as well (which makes sense). So it will shrink more, and probably bunch up. It probably also depends on how you cook it (rare, medium, burnt). When I cook hamburgers, I make thick, flat patties, and get thick, fairly flat patties out, certainly good enough to hold condiments. I also always include a little bit of a sauce in the burger to help keep it moist.
nicegeek on Jun. 14, 2011 10:12 PM
That depends on how its frozen; it's not the freezing ''per se'' that causes the water loss; it's the ice crystals formed during the freezing process that damage the meat's cell structure. Commercial flash-freezing can do the job with minimal side effects, because the meat gets frozen so fast that there's no time for ice crystals of any size to form. Meat frozen in a home freezer, on the other hand, is likely to be disappointing when thawed.
tallizen on Jun. 14, 2011 9:15 PM — George Forman Grill
I use a george forman grill I make nice thick burgers and mix a few things in to them. Some time I take the meat make a cup in my hand of the meat and put shredded chesse in the center of the burger and then close the cup around that. Or I make a Meatloaf burger where i cut onion, garlic, Mushrooms, green pepper, and mix in some Bread Crumbs, spices and an Egg. Some times it helps to put a dent in the center of the burger to get it to cook better. Spraying the George forman grill with olive oil or some other cooking oil helps too keep the burgers from sticking.
novapsyche on Jun. 17, 2011 7:47 AM
BK burgers are best because of their taste or their shape? If you mean the former, that's mainly because their meat is 40% fat. Take it from someone with inside knowledge.
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