/]  Excellent!  Agree about maximizing surface area but I try to achieve that by forming a more or less even patty with a little thumb indentation on the top and then placing it down.  As  far as the slamming your balls of meat down hard on the hot grill and pressing them down and holding them down, I have seen this done before ....

I like the gentle placement approach because it doesn't ever compress the meat.  Pressing down at the outset is fine but pressing down brutally while cooking is the thing to avoid as it causes the loss of jus and can make a mess if the hot grease spurts out the sides and gets everywhere. 

So, agree that maximum browned surface area is best but I get my burgers that way by shaping them loosely into patties beforehand.  That way I get more a precise shape than that which is possible with only the spatula, and the burger cooks evenly and consistently.  I think the less handling and flipping the better.

From Louis Lunch's antique vertical open-flame broiler traps, to the old Cassell's horizontal duplex broiler, to the old Royal Castle's steaming/grilddling combination technique which is great for sliders, to the All-American flattop griddle at your old-school drugstore or coffee shop, like the Yankee Doodle, to the outdoor Weber grill charcoal plus hickory wood method, to the fried in grease in a big black skillet soul food way of Dyer's in Memphis, to the intriguing onion-fried burgers of El Reno and Chickasha, Oklahoma*, there are many ways to make a good burger.  Good extremely fresh beef, enough salt, enough heat, those are the real essentials.

A few places in Central Connecticut specialize in steamed cheeseburgers made in a small metal sauna of sorts.  Weird but apparently they have plenty of fans in Middletown, Meriden and a couple of other places.  I haven't tried them though.  *Haven't been to Oklahoma so no El Reno onion burgers either.  Yet.

Last edited by stanshall (2014-08-26 21:52:53)

Last edited by stanshall (2014-08-28 09:54:07)