Smashed burgers?

[ctviggen]

Was watching Alton Brown’s Good Eats Reloaded, and he made the off-hand comment that he smashes burgers in a tortilla press, then fries them.

Hmmm…that’s not a bad idea.

So, we got a tortilla press, and heated some oil up in a cast iron skillet over our electric/inductive griddle. (Our gas stove is terrible for heat control.) I used palm oil. We tried a test. We sous vided 2 ounce balls of ground beef and compared with raw 2 ounce balls. Put ball on tortilla press, smash, take off. The raw were better, as the sous vide versions got “holes” in them and fell apart. The raw were easy to cook, fast, and tasted great.

So, tomorrow, we’re doing raw meat, smashed burgers, then Maria Emmerich’s cheese stick recipes. I’ll likely switch to beef tallow instead of palm oil. Tallow is very low in PUFAs. Palm oil is OK in that regard, but nothing is as good as tallow.

I wanted to grind my own beef, but we had to get ground beef. It’s still hard where I live to get certain beef.

I’ve seen that you can also just fry the smashed meat on a hot surface with little to no oil. We might try that too, for comparison.

[David_Stilley]

I do mine by putting a ball of beef into a fairly hot cast iron skillet with about a teaspoon of butter just melted smash the ball with a grill weight or a spatula down till it’s the right thickness and hold the pressure for 10 seconds. Then cook without moving till juice begins to bead on top. Salt it and scrape it off getting all the crust and flip it. I think the smashing into the hot metal with fat and pressing creates a nice crispy crust. I do mine outside. I use 5 ounce balls of beef.