Here's how to make the best hamburger recipe ever by the co-founder of Honest Burgers, Tom Barton...
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00:00I'm Tom from Honest Burgers, I'm one of the co-founders and I'm going to show you today
00:04how to make a humble beef burger.
00:08Alright, so like every good burger starts with great beef.
00:14This is ours here, we use two cuts, both readily available in a decent butcher's.
00:19We've got chuck steak and rib cap.
00:22One of the things we do which is quite unique in our butchers is we don't mince our burger
00:27which is quite, that's kind of a common ground is a minced burger and when you mince something
00:34you basically squash it through a tiny little hole right and when you do that you squash
00:38a lot of the goodness out of the burger and you break the texture down.
00:42So a lot of burgers will be minced like twice, three times, four times sometimes.
00:47The more you mince it the less natural the texture is, the more rubbery the texture is.
00:52So what we do is we chop.
00:55Just like kind of steak tartare or ham and steak hash, you end up with a really natural
01:01lovely texture and you keep all that really amazing fat and all that amazing juiciness
01:05in there.
01:06So all you need at home is a very sharp knife, chopping board and like I said, decent amount
01:12of chuck steak and rib cap.
01:14So I've got one kilo's worth here.
01:17So I've got about 800 grams of chuck and 200 grams of rib cap.
01:21And the best way to chop it nice and fine is to start slicing it really, really thin.
01:28The thinner you go now, the easier it will be to get it chopped really, really finely.
01:33Kind of like the thickness of a ration of bacon if you can.
01:37So I've sliced those up nice and thin.
01:39And then this is our chuck steak.
01:41So this is a kind of, you know, standard stewing steak, sort of slow, slow cooking.
01:48Really really good for burgers as well because it's got a nice flavour.
01:50But yeah, it's quite tough so you need to do something with it.
01:54Obviously what we're doing now is we're chopping nice and fine.
01:57There is a bit of natural fat in chuck.
02:00Sometimes sort of more than others obviously, it's a natural product.
02:03But we're getting the majority of our fat from the rib cap.
02:08And you can see the chuck has got a bit of fat running through it.
02:12But like I said, most of it's coming in from the rib cap itself.
02:16Loads of fat.
02:17That can be sometimes 50% if not more.
02:20We've sliced it nice and thin.
02:22I appreciate this might seem like a lot of effort to go for a burger but trust me, it's
02:28worth it.
02:29You get a really amazing steak-like texture.
02:33So what you've got to do now is you're taking those long thin strands and you're basically
02:38just going to cut them really really fine.
02:42You want to just go as much as you can really.
02:44You can't really do, you can't really overdo it at this stage.
02:48Because you need to get it nice and fine, you need to get that fat nice and fine.
02:52So when you mix it together with the leaner bit, with the chuck, it all kind of blends
02:58together.
02:59So that's what you're kind of after.
03:01So we think that a decent burger literally needs nothing more than good quality meat and
03:10salt and pepper.
03:12And really, really, really important that you don't add salt at this stage or pepper.
03:19Because what ends up happening is the salt will literally just suck the moisture.
03:24So we don't want to do that with the burger.
03:26And it will happen in a burger in a couple of hours if you leave it.
03:30And that's when you start to break the texture down, you start getting a really rubbery texture.
03:35And worse than that, obviously, you're sucking out all of the really lovely flavours.
03:39So the other good thing about these cuts of meat is they're not crazy expensive.
03:42That's, you know, one of the best things about burgers is you really don't want to put expensive
03:47meat.
03:48Probably a butcher, you might be paying six quid, six pound a kilo, something like that.
03:57So now we've got our meat cut up nice and fine.
03:59We need to give it a good mix because we've got loads of fat in the rib cap and not a huge
04:05amount in the chuck.
04:06So you want to get that fat evenly distributed and get it nice and stuck in.
04:10And it's good to do with your hand as well, all right?
04:12If you use your hands, the heat from your hands, they help the fat kind of start to melt a little
04:17bit.
04:18And that's what we're using as our glue.
04:20So what I'm going to do now, this is an American technique, it's called smashing.
04:24So you take a ball, we're going to say that's roughly 150 grams.
04:28I know that because I've made many of these in my life and you basically just bang it together.
04:35By doing this, again, you're getting a bit of heat in there, you're going to get the fat
04:40starting to glisten a little bit so you know the fat's kind of melting.
04:44And then as soon as we're confident, take that onto our board in between the paper and
04:52then one of these, you can pick up one of these online, they're about 25 quid.
04:56Nice firm press.
05:00And then we've got our first burger right there.
05:11So we're going to get about seven patties out of this mix, we did about a kilo.
05:17Really important now we go put them in the fridge, they need to set.
05:20Like I said, if you try and cook these now, they're going to fall apart.
05:22So we need to put them in the fridge, get them to set, four hours, six hours, something
05:26like that, and then they'll be ready to go.
05:29All right, so burgers are ready.
05:32They've been chilled in the fridge, so they're nice and firm, they're going to hold together
05:37when we cook them.
05:38I'm going to say something controversial now.
05:42Even on a beautiful hot sunny day like today, I'd still be cooking my burgers inside in
05:47a frying pan.
05:49It's the best way, I really mean that, you know, if you're going to go to all that effort
05:52on texture, on flavour, on sourcing good quality meat, you put it in a barbecue, you're not
05:57going to get all that flavour in there.
05:59So we want to get a pan super hot like this.
06:02You drop the burger in and it's going to literally sear all that flavour in.
06:06And you don't want to just get this really dark crust on the burger.
06:10That is like gold, right?
06:12You want to keep that in there.
06:13So it keeps all the juiciness, all the flavour, all the reasons for us chopping, not mincing.
06:17It's going to keep it in there.
06:19Barbecuing just doesn't work by that.
06:21So you don't even have to put any oil in the pan, which is going to go straight in because
06:25there's so much fat in the burger, it's going to hold.
06:28And now we're going to season very liberally with salt and pepper.
06:36And you do have to go pretty big on the salt and pepper because there's nothing running
06:40through there.
06:41You're only going to have a salt crust on the top and a salt crust on the bottom.
06:45So trust me when I say it, you've got to go quite big on the salt and pepper.
06:49We're going to just do a really humble beef burger today.
06:54So there's not crazy amounts going on in there.
06:56But because we've got this amazing beef, you're going to get all that flavour through.
07:00So we've just got some shredded little gem lettuce on a toasted glazed bun.
07:07We're going to be cooking this for about three minutes each side.
07:09That's going to give us a really nice medium pink in the middle.
07:13At Honest, we do that.
07:16We go down to medium rare as well.
07:18It is pretty complicated serving medium rare burgers and serving medium burgers.
07:23We go to a hell of a lot of effort, right the way back to the farms, to the abattoirs,
07:27the cutting plant, to our very own butchers, to make sure that it's safe for us to do medium
07:32burgers, medium rare burgers.
07:35For me it's the only way, obviously it's completely up to you how you cook your burger.
07:39I'm going to just give this a little scrape now.
07:43You should see a really, really lovely dark brown sear, which is exactly what we're after.
07:50And then like I said, another big load of salt, load of pepper.
07:55So what we've got here is just a reduced, really, really reduced onion relish.
08:02We put a load of brown sugar in here.
08:04This is red onion.
08:06You can use white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar.
08:10You need something in there to kind of counteract all the sugar.
08:13So I remember seeing my dad cook a burger on a barbecue and he would be pressing it down
08:18as hard as he could.
08:20God knows where that's come from, that technique.
08:22It's mental.
08:23You've got all this lovely fat and lovely flavour and moisture in the burger.
08:28You've seared it that side.
08:29So you need to start pressing down now.
08:31You're literally squashing all of the lovely flavour out of the burger.
08:35So you've got to treat it with a bit of love.
08:37You can see it's just about starting to bubble at the top now.
08:39So I'm going to take this off now.
08:41So we're going to leave that burger to rest now and you look at it, it's really lovely
08:47juices coming off there.
08:48It's nice and medium.
08:49We're going to move over to our chips.
08:52So chips for us are just as important as the burger.
08:55We're never going to serve a frozen chip with our burger.
08:58We've always made them from scratch.
09:00So these are our chips, so these are homemade in our prep kitchen and you notice we put
09:07the skin on.
09:08We quite like the kind of rustic look and we love the taste of the skin, nice and crispy.
09:13We cook these in our prep kitchen and then we do like a final fry in the restaurants to
09:19get them nice and crispy.
09:20This is our seasoning.
09:23We put this on our chips straight away, so fresh out of the oil.
09:26And all you've got in here is rosemary, so fresh rosemary, lemon zest and Maldon sea salt.
09:32And you can make this at home really, really easily.
09:33All you need is a pestle and mortar and a load of thyme and you literally just grind away.
09:39As long as you can, you can get a really lovely colour, lovely flavour and it's a real nice
09:43kind of citrusy rosemary smell, works amazingly with chips.
09:47So I'm going to drop these in now.
09:49So you've got to be really careful with the fryer.
09:52You can make these on the stove at home.
09:55Just be really careful, make sure you've got a thermometer in there because we all know
09:59what happens when you heat oil up too hot.
10:01So we've got some lovely resting juices going on in the burger now.
10:04We know that's going to be nice and pink.
10:06So be very gentle, pop it on there.
10:11So we've got lettuce, beef, chopped beef not minced, red onion relish and our toasted bun.
10:19And then what burger would not be complete without some chips.
10:24So we're just going to drain the oil, decent amount of rosemary salt on there.
10:32It's really important that you season straight out of the oil so you get it nice and coated.
10:45Nice generous portion there.
10:47There we go.
10:48That's our beef burger with rosemary salted chips.