Burgers are a staple of the grill. Everybody has done them. It’s maybe not even worth a blog post (though that bar is VERY low on this site) so I decided to spice them up a bit.
My basic process is to dump the ground beef into a bowl and add some spices: salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and rosemary are generally in there but it varies from batch to batch. Then I mix it all up with my fingers, taking care to mix as little as possible just to get it all combined. Then I form it into patties that are roughly 1/2 pound each. I keep them uniform thickness and make them extra large and a bit flat. They will contract as you cook them.
I get those patties made about 30 minutes before I need to put them on the grill so they can warm up a bit. The grill gets preheated to around 450-500 and then the patties go on. I give them about 3-4 minutes on each side and once the thermometer reads around 140, I pull them off.
For these burgers, I melted some cheese on top, toasted the bun on the warm grill grates and then added some bacon and a fried egg. YUM.
Along the way I also made a batch of sliced potatoes. I love fries with my burger but I imagine this is a little healthier than frying (though potatoes aren’t very healthy no matter how you eat them.)
Burgers are cheap and as easy or complicated as you want them to be. It’s a great meal to try over and over and come up with your own perfect process. The only thing I’ve found that really screws them up is using beef that has been previously frozen. Burgers made from thawed meet regularly fall apart on the grill for me.
