Ingredient

Burger

A burger is minced beef, salt and heat. Everything that makes one good comes down to three decisions: how fatty the mince is, how little you handle it, and how hot the surface is. Additions — egg, breadcrumbs, onion, herbs — generally make it worse, and make it a rissole rather than a burger.

Fat, and why lean mince makes a bad burger

A burger has no sauce inside it and nothing to keep it moist but its own fat. Lean mince produces a dry, crumbly, disappointing patty however carefully it is cooked.

Around twenty per cent fat is the widely used benchmark, and it is roughly what chuck gives. Anything much leaner and the burger dries out; much fattier and it shrinks dramatically and flares on a barbecue.

Cut matters as well as percentage. Chuck is the standard for a reason: good fat content and strong beefy flavour. Brisket adds richness. Short rib adds depth and costs more. A blend is what most good burger places use. Mince labelled simply "beef mince, 5% fat" is for bolognese, not for burgers.

If you can, mince it yourself or ask a butcher to mince it coarsely and freshly. Coarse, freshly minced beef has a texture that supermarket mince does not, and the difference is larger than any seasoning decision.

Handle it less, and salt it late

Two rules that sound fussy and are the difference between a burger and a meatloaf puck.

Handle it as little as possible. Working mince compacts it and starts developing the meat proteins into a springy, bouncy network — the same process that gives a sausage its texture, which is exactly what you do not want here. Form the patty with the lightest possible touch, in as few movements as you can. A loosely formed patty is tender; a well-worked one is rubbery.

Salt the outside just before cooking, not the inside. Salt mixed through mince and left to sit dissolves the proteins and produces that same springy, sausage-like texture. Salting the surface of a formed patty immediately before it hits the pan seasons it and helps the crust without doing that.

Dimple the middle of a thick patty with your thumb. Burgers dome as they cook because the outside contracts; a dimple gives it somewhere to go and it comes out flat.

The two methods

They are different dishes and both are good.

Smash burger

A ball of mince pressed hard and thin onto a very hot flat surface for the first thirty seconds, then left. Maximum contact, maximum crust, cooked through in a couple of minutes. Thin and craggy with an enormous browned surface. Usually served in twos.

Thick patty

Formed gently, two to three centimetres thick, cooked over high heat with less pressing, so it can stay pink inside. Meatier and juicier, less crust.

Never press a thick patty

The sizzle when you push down is fat and juice leaving. This is only correct in the first seconds of a smash burger, where the trade is deliberate.

The pan

Cast iron or a heavy flat pan beats a barbecue for crust, because contact with a solid hot surface browns far better than radiant heat with fat dripping away.

Cheese

Added at the end with a lid or a splash of water to steam it. Processed cheese melts best; cheddar tastes better and can split.

Doneness

Minced beef is a different case from a whole cut, because the surface is mixed through the middle. What is safe, and for whom, is a Food Standards Agency question rather than a cookery one.

What goes wrong

• Dry. Mince too lean. Twenty per cent fat.
• Bouncy and rubbery. Over-worked, or salted through the mix in advance.
• Domed like a ball. No dimple, and the outside contracted. Press a thumbprint into the middle.
• No crust. The pan was not hot enough, or the patty was wet, or the pan was crowded.
• Falling apart. Handled too little to hold together — a genuine trade-off. Chilling the formed patties firms them without working them.
• Soggy bun. Toast the cut faces in butter or beef fat. It takes thirty seconds and it is a moisture barrier as well as a flavour improvement.

Common questions