SHANNON LONG/ GETTY IMAGES
F
L
OR SOME OF US, spring is a threemonth-long warm-up session for
burger season. We’re just waiting
around until we can dust off our
grills, or for those of us trapped in
the urban sprawl, at least eat our
cast-iron-skillet-griddled burgers on the roof. But we know there
are some of you out there who
dread burger season because of the
burger mistakes we’ve all made
at one point or another — maybe
they’re overcooked, maybe they’re
rubbery, maybe they’re dry or
boring. If your hands have gone
all clammy, take a deep breath,
you’re in the right place.
Like all other kinds of instinctual cooking, no one can really tell
you exactly how to cook a burger.
There are tons of variables: meat
quality, cooking method, temperature preference. Like all things
worth cooking, you have to mess a
few up before you hit your stride.
Without further ado, we give
you the eight most frequent mistakes we all make with burgers.
MISTAKES
BEST
SUMMER
EVER
HUFFINGTON
05.26.13
LIFESTYLE
FOOD
1. Buying very lean,
cheap or frozen meat.
We say it all the time, we’ll say it
again: good meat costs money. We
shouldn’t eat a burger every day, we
should treat it as a luxury — so we
shouldn’t buy cheap, overly-lean,
mystery-composition, (especially)
frozen hamburger meat. You want
to throw a backyard BBQ with 40
friends? Buy whatever kind of hamburger meat you want. But if you
want to make you and a few close
friends the best burgers ever, treat
it like you treat bacon, steak and
poultrys, and get something nice.
PRO TIP
#1: Don’t
skimp on the
hamburger
meat.