When it comes to ground meat dishes, you can’t forget the hamburger steak that adults and children love to eat. Although it’s not difficult to make your own hamburger steak, it sometimes tastes dry or doesn’t taste good enough, but I don’t know what the problem is. Wherever the same error occurs repeatedly. In order to avoid this situation, Alvin Cailan, a well-known restaurant chef in New York, USA, provides 5 tips for your reference. After reading it, you may be able to find out where the problem is.
meat choice is important
By mixing ground beef with ground pork, you can make a juicy and well-balanced hamburger steak. Generally, ground beef is leaner, so if you only use ground beef, the hamburger will be too dry, but if you only use ground pork with high fat content, it will taste too oily, and the beef will be too oily. The pig mix will achieve the balance. The common ratio of beef to pig is 7:3. If you want more juiciness, you can adjust it to 3:2, or even 1:1. The more ground pork, the softer the hamburger will be. If you only want to use ground beef, you can choose items with a fat content of about 20%, so that the hamburger steak will not be too dry. For example, beef shoulder with more oil can make juicy hamburger steak. If you only want to use ground pork, it is recommended to choose a lower fat content.
Do not over stir the meat
When mixing ground meat with other chopped ingredients (such as chopped onions), you need to mix them by hand to form a hamburger steak, but if you mix the ground meat by hand for too long, the resulting burger The steak won’t be very fluffy and juicy, so try not to overcook it, it’s fine to grab a little stickiness, and don’t pat the hamburger steak long enough to avoid it getting too firm. In addition, the lower the temperature of the ground meat after de-icing, the easier it is to shape the hamburger steak, the time to handle the meat by hand will naturally be shortened, and the finished hamburger steak will be more juicy, so it is recommended that you make The day before the hamburger steak, move the ground meat in the freezer to the freezer to defrost, so that the ground meat can remain cold after the ice has been defrosted.
size of hamburger steak
How big should a hamburger steak be? In fact, there is no standard answer to this question. Some people recommend it from a small size of 110g to a large size of 280g. In fact, this is related to the way of cooking. For example, when making hamburgers, a small-sized hamburger steak can be perfectly sandwiched into the hamburger bun, but if If you want to cook with BBQ, a hamburger steak of about 180g ~ 200g is more suitable. Regardless of the cooking method, try not to make the steak too uneven in thickness so that the steak heats evenly as it cooks.
Seasoning order
Most people will add salt, pepper and other seasonings into the ground meat and mix it into the shape of a hamburger steak. The chef said that this is of course no problem, but if you want to make the hamburger steak more juicy, you can try Don’t add seasoning at the beginning, because the seasoning will absorb the moisture of the ground meat and make the ground meat more solid, so we can make the ground meat into a hamburger steak first, and then do the seasoning action from the outside of the hamburger steak, and the seasoning should be Add more (or go with a strong sauce), as the burger steak is not seasoned on the inside, and in case the outside isn’t seasoned enough, the overall flavor will be too bland.
Flip the hamburger steak only once
According to the chef, one of the most common mistakes when frying hamburger steaks is to frequently turn the burger steak. When you put the hamburger in the pan and fry for a while, and you feel that the bottom half of the hamburger should be cooked, use the spatula to gently scrape the bottom of the hamburger. If the spatula can easily move the entire hamburger, it means the bottom half When the part is cooked, you can turn the hamburger steak over and continue to fry the other half. Conversely, if the hamburger steak is undercooked, it cannot be easily moved with a spatula. After frying, if you are worried that the hamburger steak is not fully cooked in the middle, you can use a fork to check it. If there is no bloody juice flowing out, it is cooked.
