I mentioned recently that every time I have a major surgery I wake up with a slightly tweaked palette, and as a result have become obsessed with burgers as of late (which isn’t great, because they’re super unhealthy). I’ve been rating all the chain restaraunts, and you can see my ratings here. But, you can’t eat out all the time, and it was inevitable that I started to develop an itch to make my own burgers at home.
The obvious method for making a burger at home is to grill. And indeed, I have grilled a few burgers (to mediocre success). But as much as I love the chargrilled flavor, I find that grilled burgers are often lacking the satisfying crust and the deeply juicy qualities that burgers cooked on restaurant flattops often possess.
I had made burgers in my apartment back when I was a single man, and those attempts were never successful. I remember that cooking them was a messy affair, one that left the entire kitchen coated in a layer of grease and the floor a veritable skating rink. I also remember the apartment reeking for the rest of the day, if not week.
In this case, my memory served me well. I researched all the best cooking methods, and set out to do things better this time around. First, I purchased a splatter screen to make sure the grease didn’t spread out over my kitchen. I used a proper cast-iron meat press to sear the burger against a piping hot pan. I did everything exactly right. The result?
Disappointment.
For $6 and 5 minutes of my time I can drive down the street to the local burger joint (Pal’s, a local chain where I once worked when I was sixteen years old), and purchase an absolutely delicious cheeseburger with all the classic toppings you can expect.
For $15 and hours of my time, I can go to the grocery store, purchase hamburger meat, a head of lettuce, a tomato, and an onion, then I can come home and prep the veggies and shape the hamburger meat into a patty. Once that’s done, I can spend fifteen minutes cooking the burger, destroy my kitchen in the process, and be left with something that is a pale imitation of something much cheaper and delicious.
But wait, I hear you say, you can make multiple burgers with those ingredients! And it’s true. I ended up making four burgers with everything, so there is certainly some amortization at play. For $3.75 I can eat a burger that brings me little joy, is greasier than what I can get at the restaurant, and then spend hours of my day prepping, cooking, and cleaning up after it. No, thank you.
And to confirm, the splatter screen made no difference. My kitchen was still coated in grease, and my house smelled like hot beef for two straight days. Me and my wife were both miserable!
Cooking a homemade burger is overrated, especially when done indoors. I might can see me throwing a few on the grill on a hot summer day, but I vow to never cook another burger indoors!