I made smashed burgers last night. It's my preferred way of making burgers these days when I'm using store-bought ground beef. They're similar to what you get if you go to a Tom Wahl's or a Bill Gray's, but if you don't live near me you don't have either of those restaurants.
The lighting is crap in my pictures so the browning doesn't show well, but you'll get the relevant points.
You need:
Ingredients:
- Kaiser rolls
- Ground beef (93/7 and leaner is iffy, it works better with fattier burger, I used 80/20 here)
- American cheese or similar melty cheese
- Whatever toppings you like
- A bit of butter or bacon grease
Cookware:
- Cast iron skillet or griddle, well seasoned and smooth, or you can use a non-stick (either seasoned steel or coated) thick bottomed pan (Note - High walls on the pan can complicate things). I'm using a copper bottomed nonstick pan here because I don't know where the fuck my cast iron griddle plate ran off to.
- Pie plate or similar flat bottomed strong, heat resistant dish. I use a 9" pyrex pie plate
- Thin, broad, sharpish metal spatula
Depending on how much room you have in your pan, you may only been able to cook these one at a time. It's also best to let your cheese get to room temperature before starting for best melting.
Directions:
1. Start heating your pan or griddle. Basically get it as hot as you can safely go, depending on the material, assuming you have a normal stove and not some hellish contraption that can double as a forge in a pinch.
Edit to add here: If you get a teflon coated pan too hot, supposedly the coating will start to break down and get into your food, and it's toxic. So run things a little cooler if you use synthetic-coating nonstick pans. Something like a ceramic nonstick pan would presumably be fine at high temperatures.
2. Make balls of ground beef, 4-5 ounces each.
3. Put a small amount of grease or butter in the pan and spread it around with a paper towel.
4. Place one or more balls of ground beef on your cooking surface with plenty of room around each one.
Immediately press them flat with the pie plate. You want them fairly thin and maybe an inch larger in diameter than your kaiser rolls. That can actually take a fair bit of force to achieve, and a glass pie plate is great so you can see what's happening.
5. While the burger is cooking on its first side, get your cheese ready and cut your roll if you haven't already. The burgers cook fast so don't walk away.
6. The burger is ready to turn when it starts to brown around the edges and some holes are showing through, like this, or you can let it go a bit longer too:
7. Work your spatula under the burger while moving around the edge a bit at a time. The objective is to avoid ripping the burger from where it is sticking to the pan, and to get the stuck portions up cleanly. This can be impossible in a badly seasoned pan or with rough cast iron. It's also complicated by pans with walls because it can be hard to get a good shallow angle on the burger with your spatula.
If you do it right, it'll look like this when you flip it:
That browning is the really delicious part so you don't want to leave it behind.
8. Put your cheese on the burger to melt right away and let it cook about another minute. You'll need to experiment to find your preferred balance of burger thickness to doneness here. I usually go for just barely well done, maybe a small amount of pink in the center.
9. Serve on kaiser roll with appropriate toppings.
You'll need a hell of a big griddle plate if you want to serve more than about two burgers at a time, but they're delicious and easy.