Juicy Lucy burger

I used the recipe from here and once again I was not disappointed.
I just used America cheese to stuff them this time but can’t wait to get crazy the time around.
Went with 80/20 ground beef seasoned, vacuum sealed on the moist setting. Then went with 140F for 1:15.
Patted them dry and seared in a screaming hot cast iron pan.
They were fantastic.

I do have a question for the group. Can I pre make these, freeze and then cook at a later date?

I don’t see any reason why you couldn’t freeze them for cooking later.

One thing I would suggest is to make certain you are cooking ground meats long enough to pastuerise rather than just heat through, particularly when using commercially prepared ground meats. The grinding process means there is an awful lot of surface area available for nasties to hang out on.

Bill, other than taking the necessary steps to avoid getting a food born illness there’s nothing to prevent you from making your food in advance of cooking and service. As Ember advised, you need to take extra precautions using ground meat. It might be prudent for you to consider SV cooking the meat patties to the Pasteurization stage before chilling and freezing them.
Much safer.

Here’s how to make them as you asked:
You will want to work with meat that is as cold as possible. I suggest wearing disposable sterile gloves to handle the meat and disinfect any surfaces that will be in contact with the meat.

Vacuum package the formed meat patties in a single layer, date and label, and ice-bath pre-chill for 90 minutes (guessing you make them 1 1/2-inch thick) before freezing in a single layer on a frozen sheet pan in your freezer to keep the meat patties flat. In a day you can stack the frozen packages in your freezer.

It’s going to take twice as long to heat the frozen patties using SV as it did to chill them. Please don’t be tempted to thaw them at room temperature before cooking.

Cook’s Tip: When shaping your meat patties make a shallow depression in the centre of both sides of each patty. That will prevent the centres from bulging as they cook.

Thanks for that black cat, it never occurred to me to do that and as it happened I had fried a burger, a supermarket bought one, this evening and saw that it had bulged considerably on one side.

I will try and remember your tip the next time I fry one :slight_smile:

Frank and Ember give some good advice on handling the burgers. Here is an interesting article on the center bulge. He found that if you pan sear the burgers the bulge is almost non existent. I will have to try this,

For the burger lover there is nothing better in my opinion than burgers that are made from meat you grind yourself or that you have the butcher grind. The benefits I see are that you control the meat that goes in to them the grind size as well as the fat content and you know it is fresh. I make mine using a plate that produces a grind that is a little coarser than stores sell. Making a batch of patties and freezing them makes this a once every few months job.

John, for your burgers do you make a single or double grind? Which plate size, 3/8-inch?

If you make a single grind, try catching the meat in the palm of your hand as it comes out of the grinder and give it a 90-degree twist so the patties’ strands of meat are in somewhat vertical alignment as you shape them. Makes for some as very special burger eating seasoned with just pink salt and freshly ground pepper.

Somewhere a long time ago I found a 5/16" plate for the Kitchen Aid grinder and I use it for hamburgers. I use the 3/8 for chili meat.

I single grind my hamburgers. I use roughly 85% chuck and 15% sirloin by weight. I cut them into cubes mix them up and cool in freezer until they start to harden. I then grind and get a pretty good dispersion of the sirloin. I will try the strand method next time.