Outside-In Burgers | New Vintage Cooking

Of all the foods to serve at a backyard barbecue, perhaps the least surprising is the classic American hamburger. Yet a truly good hamburger—one that’s moist inside and evenly cooked, with a nicely caramelized crust—is not the easiest thing to make. It’s technique dependent, requiring the dexterity to form the burger properly without overworking the ground mixture or packing it too tightly. And the shape really is crucial, as anyone whose grilled burgers end up looking like UFOs with dried-out edges and still-raw centers can attest. The nature of convection heat is such that it causes the edges of the burger to contract while the center puffs up. To counteract this, in-the-know grillers make a small divot in the center of each raw patty, so that it looks something like a bialy. This yields a flat, evenly cooked burger in the end. 

If I’m making all this sound too difficult, it’s because I want to offer an alternative to the pure ground beef burger (not that we’d ever reject that entirely). It’s a recipe my mother has been making since the 1970s, back when we called it Surprise Burgers—which, in retrospect, sounds a bit too much like Mystery Meat to sell to any cook who attended public school. But these burgers aren’t mysterious at all, just patties enriched with some bread crumbs (a mere ¹⁄₃ cup per pound of beef) and seasoned with all the things you’d normally put on the burger: onion, ketchup, relish, Worcestershire, and mustard.

As with meatloaf, the bread crumbs here absorb liquid and bind the mixture, making the burgers moister and more tender. And the seasonings simply taste great. In fact, I was recently reminded that as a child I kept requesting this dish by saying, “Please make the special burgers.” Today I’d argue that I was just recognizing a good thing when I saw it.

GET THE RECIPE: Outside-In Burgers