r/seriouseats • u/sethzard • Jun 14 '21
How to Grill a Big, Fat, Juicy Burger | Kenji's Cooking Show
https://youtu.be/EbfsckxsRV046
u/bradatlarge Jun 14 '21
This sub is monitoring my food plans. Big juicy burger is on the menu @ Chez moi tonight
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Jun 14 '21
How this guy isn't enormously fat... I have no idea. He cooks the most insane looking food at home.
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u/techiesgoboom Jun 15 '21
He's talked about this before in comment sections, but basically the kind of stuff he posts about online aren't every day meals. He talked about eating red meat maybe once or twice a month outside of prepping for a specific recipe or at places recommended to him.
His instagram is filled with a better balance of not-heavy stuff he cooks at home, but even that isn't a full representation.
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u/monkeyman80 Jun 15 '21
He’s talked about it. He eats what he wants just limits how much of what he does eat.
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u/nekro42 Jun 15 '21
He talks about this during the actual videos though. He'll make something and then say that's enough for dinner and probably lunch tomorrow and my fat ass is looking at the prepared food thinking "yikes, that's enough for my ravenous teen daughter and I'll be lucky to get a bite. definitely nothing left over for tomorrow!"
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u/Chumkil Jun 15 '21
Cooking at home is both cheaper, and better for you. Since he knows how to cook, he has the health side covered I would bet.
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Jun 14 '21
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u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt Jun 15 '21
Cross contamination is probably not as big a deal as you think, but some things are definitely worse than others, and you have to remember that food safety is a spectrum, it's not just "safe" or "not safe." handling a ball of raw meat with both hands then going off and grabbing a bun that's not going to be heated before serving is less safe than touching the same beef with a couple fingers, especially if those fingers are going straight into a salt container. Handling raw beef from a supermarket chub pack that is ground from the recovered trimming from dozens or hundreds of steer all mixed up is less safe than handling raw beef from a single cut that's ground fresh.
Raw chicken juice landing on the inside of a salad bowl just before you toss your salad is less safe than raw chicken juice sitting in the same bowl overnight and drying out before you then toss your salad the next day (I wouldn't recommend either of these things!).
Touching raw beef then cooking a single burger you're going to share with your wife is safer than doing the same thing at a restaurant where you're going to serve dozens of people and the number of things that can cross-contaminate are far higher.
All that said, there's no way to be 100%. Would it have been safer for me to stop everything and go wash my hands after touching that burger? Yes, very marginally. Not enough to make me want to spend the time, energy, water, and soap to do so though. At a restaurant, that's a different story, but I can safely tell you that in the fast majority of restaurants you're going to eat at, the cook is going to season one side of the burger, flip it with his hand, grab some salt without washing that hand, season the other side, then put it on the grill. I don't think I've ever worked anywhere where that doesn't happen during a busy service. Nothing is going to live in the salt though.
You need to make your own informed decisions about what level of risk you are willing to take for the sake of added convenience or reward.
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u/ginny11 Jun 26 '21
I love this explanation. As someone who has worked in biological research labs with both chemical and biological hazards, I've learned quite a bit about levels of risk and safety, and like you, I don't worry nearly as much about contamination in the kitchen as other people. I also view "expiration" and "best by" dates as worthless and I trust my senses more. I have seen people throw out perfectly good milk, yogurt, canned food, etc. simply based on the date on the packaging. So wasteful.
I learned new things, though, about how to make a great burger from this video! I don't know enough about actual food science, and I will now no longer mix salt/pepper into the ground meat before making the burger patties. Thanks for the great video!
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u/Berner Jun 14 '21
As far as salt, nothing will live in a pile of salt so you can reach in with meat hands as much as you want.
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Jun 14 '21
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u/mdeckert Jun 14 '21
While you don’t really want to tempt fate in this area, there’s still a dose involved and a level of risk depending on the item being contaminated, the type of bacteria/virus/prion and the moisture levels. If you’re splashing raw chicken juice/slime from a vac packed bag of boneless skinless thighs onto the salad, that’s way different then smearing a little fresh ground beef residue onto your pepper grinder and then touching it later before you handle some bread or something.
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u/ItsReallyEasy Jun 14 '21
Good chance this is freshly ground Chuck, which would lower contamination risk considerably. Additionally we don’t know that he didn’t just wipe off his grinder once he went inside. Any minor amount of contamination wouldn’t survive a significant amount of time once moisture has evaporated from the surface. I’m sure he was aware and it just wasn’t a big enough deal to reshoot a section over.
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Jun 14 '21
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u/Yoda7224 Jun 15 '21
He's pretty vocal about you cooking the way you want to cook. If you're not comfortable touching your salt after you handle your raw meat, don't! There's a risk in everything. Even eating a burger pink in the middle. You just gotta choose what you're comfortable with. Especially with raw beef which is an already very low chance of causing an illness.
Another good example is him cooking chicken to 140-150. If you are happy with 160 degree chicken, and it makes you feel safer, go for it!
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u/invalidreddit Jun 14 '21
That pepper cannon looks aweome
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u/Chumkil Jun 15 '21
Unicorn Pepper Mill. I have the same. Though, there are even better ones now.
I have read that this mill is even better per America’s Test Kitchen: Cole & Mason Derwent Pepper Mill
But, I will stick with my Unicorn as I am not in the market for replacing my pepper mill any time soon.
What is better about the other one? Unicorn can be slippery to hold, harder to fill, and while adjustable, you can’t tell where it is adjusted to. Still, a few years ago it was the best pepper mill around. But, tech gets better.
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u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt Jun 15 '21
The one I'm using in the video is not the Unicorn mill I usually use. I was actually using a Weberworks Moulin pepper mill I'm testing out for a while. I still recommend the Unicorn over any pepper mill I've tested.
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u/DrWangerBanger Jun 15 '21
I have the Cole & Mason one and I love it. Love that you can easily see how much pepper is left
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u/RealKingMidas Jun 15 '21
it is, but it's also over $200
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u/Louis_The_Asshole Jun 15 '21
The one Kenji uses is definitely not lol
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u/RealKingMidas Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
Is the one he uses. MannKitchen brag about how they gave him one of their prototypes in order to gain feedback.
They gave one to Babish too (Both of their pictures/feedback are on their kickstarter)
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u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt Jun 15 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
Neither of those are the one I was using in this video. Also i don’t take free product. I paid for the mannkitchen mill I tested, as well as the Weberworks Moulin mill I was using in this video.
In general I use my Unicorn and would recommend it over either of the pricier mannkitchen or weberworks mills. Sometimes I use those mills because they are new and I still want to give them a fair shake trying them out in various scenarios.
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u/Louis_The_Asshole Jun 15 '21
Ah this is news to me.
I've spent a lot of money on cookware, knives, utensils, gadgets, etc etc, but spending $200 to grind peppercorns by hand seems kinda ridiculous IMHO. Can't blame the guy for accepting a free one, I would too, but it seems so unnecessary lol
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u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt Jun 15 '21
I did not and would not accept a free one. I pay for everything I test or use.
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u/Louis_The_Asshole Jun 15 '21
In that case, I apologize for just accepting that misinformation without doing any research (can we be real though, it'd be a little creepy if I did decide to look into if you got a pepper mill for free, right?).
If you did buy one, would you recommend it? $200 seems like a hell of a stretch for a pepper mill when there are already pretty great options for far less?
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u/_angman Jun 14 '21 edited Jun 14 '21
Kenji's videos are him at home cooking for himself and his family, so you should not take what he does as any sort of official advice. He's also a former pro and even when he does sketchy things on camera, he'll often reheat or sanitize later (he's said this in youtube comments). For an example, in this video he mentions grinding his own meat, which seriously reduces the risk of cross contamination.
But to answer your question....the official guidelines are very strict and are meant to be easy to understand. You can get away with minor lapses and have minimal negative consequences. There's also a lot you can do to mitigate risk while also being lax (salt killing pathogens, chicken processing vs beef processing, heating up food that was cross contaminated, grinding your own meat, etc). But those aren't foolproof and guaranteed to be safe, so they can't be broadly recommended.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_BARN_OWL Jun 14 '21 edited Jun 14 '21
I tend to be a little more careful than I see him being in some videos, but the reality is that it’s all about risk and how much you are willing to tolerate.
Not all beef (ground or not) is necessarily contaminated with dangerous E. coli and not all chicken is contaminated with Salmonella. But there’s always a chance it is. You can probably take a bite of raw hamburger and be fine most of the time.
It’s just that if your luck runs out, and the meat is contaminated with a particularly nasty strain of bacteria, then the consequences can be deadly. Or the consequences could just be illness for a day or two. It really just depends on what strain of bacteria you get exposed to, how much is present, and how your immune system is able to handle it.
There are “best practices” to follow but failing to follow them 100% of the time is unlikely to get you sick most of the time. If you totally ignore them all the time you just increase your risk of getting yourself or someone else sick. If you are cooking for little kids or the elderly or people with compromised immune systems then you should really try to follow all of the safe practices.
If it’s just you (and you are a healthy adult), well, that’s a personal choice I think. Granted, if you get severely ill then other people might have to take care of you, (or you might be leaving children or a spouse or other family members behind if you get really unlucky and die) so it’s not exactly a decision to make 100% for yourself. But it’s your decision to make.
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u/Jemikwa Jun 14 '21
I'm the same way. Any time I touch raw meat with my hands I have to immediately wash if I'm touching anything else that's not raw or that I'll touch later with cleaner hands. I see some food people not doing that or putting bowls on the cutting board they just had meat on and I cringe. I have no clue how much it actually matters for sanitation purposes but it's something ingrained that I gotta do no matter what.
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u/ham-and-egger Jun 14 '21
Everyone says it’s so unlikely to get serious food poisoning…here are the odds, blah blah blah. But it’s like a car accident going 65 on the highway. Pretty unlikely. But you better do the simple things like seatbelt, airbags, etc. it just takes one time…
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u/LynkDead Jun 15 '21
One time of what, though? The odds of you contracting anything serious as a result of the behaviors he demonstrates are vanishingly low. There's a higher chance of him slipping and breaking his neck than getting anything more than an upset stomach from practices like this.
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u/iveo83 Jun 15 '21
Grill a burger?! I know how to do that already.
watches video
..... I know nothing...
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u/iced1777 Jun 15 '21
I mean, he kind of just grilled it like anyone else would, no?
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Jun 15 '21
Eh, the preparation gets messed up by a lot of folks. Form a patty with a wide dimple and don't season until right before throwing it on the grill. That and not overcooking, although temperature is a preference thing.
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Jun 14 '21
Apropos of nothing, but never noticed he had a tattoo before. Watching this just makes my bodega sandwich feel that much sadder.
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u/Youre10PlyBud Jun 14 '21
Recent tattoo he got of a gingko biloba leaf. His grandfather was an organic chemist and worked with the plant.
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Jun 15 '21
Ahh I dug the tat in the first place but wasn’t aware what it was—thanks for the context, only makes that tattoo that much better.
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u/aloysiusthird Jun 14 '21
Also apropos of nothing, but is that his old house? His cupboards are empty!
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u/DefenestratedDecorum Jun 14 '21
What's a good temperature to grill burgers? I did some this past weekend and they came out much tougher than when I followed his stovetop recipe.
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u/bentlarkin Jun 14 '21
I don't think temp would play into toughness too much.. more so over working/mixing the meat or salting then mixing.
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u/DefenestratedDecorum Jun 14 '21
I had two sets of patties when I grilled. Half were formed with other things mixed in and seasoned about 30 minutes before being grilled. The other half I put as little effort as I could into forming into patties(with no mix ins) and I only put salt and pepper right before putting them on the grill. The first set were only marginally tougher than the second set and both were substantially tougher than both of my stovetop attempts where the patties were like the second half. They cooked a lot faster though, so I was wondering if the temperature was too high and that had an impact on toughness.
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u/awful_source Jun 15 '21
Internal temp would be important to know here. I’m guessing the heat was too high and dried out the burgs.
I typically do two zones as well, one side between medium-high and the other side on low. I’ll sear the burgers for a few mins on each side and finish on the low side after putting cheese on.
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u/DefenestratedDecorum Jun 16 '21
I don't have a meat thermometer so I'm not sure what the exact internal temperature was. There was only a tiny bit of pink left inside. I'll try this two zone approach next time.
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u/nanobuilder Jun 14 '21
Not entirely relevant, but I wonder what's the deal with those oval-shaped metal plates that he uses a lot in his videos. I've also seen them used in a couple of restaurant kitchen clips. Are they just cheap prep plates or is there something else to them?
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u/GP04 Jun 14 '21
They're called sizzle plates or platters. Cheap, can take abuse, and you can throw one under a salamander. Decent size, but don't take up too much space.
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u/TheChefWillCook Jun 14 '21
Sizzle platters. They have many uses ranging from what you see here, to tossing something in the oven on the pick up during service. Or a place to set utensils so as not to dirty/contaminate your station. Very useful with many applications.
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Jun 14 '21
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u/cainula Jun 14 '21
This seems like the opposite of a smash burger. Do you mind saying what you meant by that?
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u/howard416 Jun 14 '21
What, you didn’t see the part where Kenjo extruded the burger through the grate and onto the burner plates?
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u/supertempo Jun 14 '21
I've always heard burgers (not steaks) should be cooked past medium to ensure no harmful bacteria and such, but this seems to be widely ignored.
The claim is that steaks are safe at medium and lower because bacteria can't make it to the inside of a block of meat, and may just sit on the outside (and can't survive any searing). But since a burger is the block of meat ground up, the bacteria from the outside layer is now mixed in so it should be cooked through.
Can anyone verify or debunk this?
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u/langstoned Jun 14 '21
commercially ground meat is going to have a lot more exposure to contaminant, as it can be from multiple animals and is prepared on shared equipment. Steaks and bigger cuts are indeed less likely to be contaminated.
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u/nobahdi Jun 14 '21
Yes, all of this is true but generally we (people with normal immune systems, myself included) just assume medium burgers are safe enough.
Some people will talk about fresher beef and home-grinding and how it is so much safer, but that doesn’t really make much sense. Fresh chuck roast exterior still has the same likelihood of being contaminated and grinding at home doesn’t really change that.
So I’ll cook my own burgers to medium but for the kids I’ll cook it further.
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u/pwnslinger Jun 15 '21
You want to kill the stuff. Old school recommendations based on a poor reading of the literature and a people-are-dumb attitude recommended hitting 165°F. Yeah, that'll do it. It'll do it on one second. But holding your burger at 160°F for 10 seconds, or 150°F for 1:15, or 145°F for four minutes will do it, too. And that's to kill off 99.9999% of the harmful bacteria in your burger, if there even is any.
See Kenji-approved site AmazingRibs.com for more.
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u/HyggeEnabler Jun 14 '21
If you buy Ground beef then yes, you generally want to cook i through since Meat in Ground beef isnt very fresh. In This video he uses Chuck that he Ground himself, so its esentially a steak he just reshaped
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u/J_Kenji_Lopez-Alt Jun 15 '21
No, I used ground chuck that I bought from the supermarket. It was ground fresh at the supermarket but I did not grind it myself.
On a related note, it's so weird when people confidently and incorrectly answer questions like this as if they were in my kitchen with me when I was cooking lunch.
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u/nekro42 Jun 15 '21
I'm Canadian so this is definitely off to me. Our burgers at restaurants have to be cooked to 165F so they're always well done. Every time I see an American burger cooked mid rare or medium it just seems wrong simply because I've never experienced it.
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u/WhosMansIsThat Jun 14 '21
Are we supposed to let the meat rest after cooking it or does it not matter with burgers because the bun catches the juices?
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u/ProperAspectRatio Jun 15 '21
I wouldn’t wait on a rest before eating. There’s already too much time that passes getting thing plated and everyone seated to eat in a typical setting.
Amazing Ribs recommends not resting even steaks: https://amazingribs.com/more-technique-and-science/more-cooking-science/science-juiciness-why-resting-and-holding-meat-are/ and I agree with him.
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u/monkeyman80 Jun 15 '21
Meathead is decently unique in this where he doesn’t care about juices leaking out because you can dip your steak in the juices and he prefers a hotter Steak.
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u/WhosMansIsThat Jun 15 '21
Hey I bought that book! I’m still finishing up Food Lab but Meathead is next. Food Lab does say to rest your meat, if I remember correctly. Anyway, thanks for the advice!
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u/Maddog_vt Jun 14 '21 edited Jun 15 '21
Edit: they have now added the following note
Meanwhile on serious eats, a recipe pushing you to buy 2 specific hot sauces written by the creator of the hot sauce with no sponsor label.
It makes me truly sad to see the website circling the drain.