![]() Start by grilling burgers over the high-heat zone to create deep surface browning, and then move them to the low-heat zone to finish cooking, a strategy known as indirect grilling. To prevent this, set up your grill with both high-heat and low-heat zones. (These browning reactions are known as Maillard reactions, named after Louis-Camille Maillard, the French chemist who discovered them.) The higher the heat, the more intense the browning reactions, and the more complex the flavor.īut if left over high heat for too long, a burger’s crust can go from browned to burnt. Surface browning begins to occur around 250☏, when the meat’s sugar and protein react with each other, forming an unstable structure, which then breaks down into hundreds of flavorful compounds that make the meat taste more savory, caramelized, and delicious. The intense heat of a grill creates a deeply browned crust, one of the hallmarks of a great burger. ![]() Raging hot, but not for the entire cooking time. That’s why ground beef with a fat content of less than 10 percent is unpalatably dry when cooked, beef with 10 to 15 percent fat content tastes lean and juicy, meat with a 15 to 20 percent fat content tastes rich and beefy, and burgers with more than 20 percent fat have very full flavor but a fatty mouth-feel. It doesn’t make heat transfer into the meat any faster, but it does increase moisture loss by wringing the meat fibers as if they were a saturated sponge.įinally, fat content also contributes to the perception of moisture in burgers, not because the burger has more juice, but because we do the presence of fat in the mouth triggers saliva flow. Every turn or prod forces out more juice, which is why you should never press a cooking burger with the back of a spatula in an attempt to speed up the grilling time. To maintain juiciness, handle burgers as little as possible during grilling. As burgers cook, the protein in the meat contracts, forcing out moisture. How you handle your burgers is the second key. We’ve found that 2 to 3 tablespoons of ice-cold water mixed into a pound of ground beef greatly increases the juiciness of grilled burgers. The easiest way is to add water or some other liquid to the burger mixture. If you want a juicy hamburger, it helps to restore some of that lost moisture. When the absorptive pad in the bottom of a package of commercially ground beef is soaked, it’s because it’s saturated with juice that had been in the meat. Grinding meat pulverizes the muscle fibers, which allows the moisture inside to run out. The protein parts are full of moisture (lean beef is about 60 percent water). Meat, which is a cross-section of muscle, is composed of protein and fat. Recipe Collection: Best Burgers on the Block Here, we’ll discuss the relationship between ground meat and high heat, and how to marry the two for the tastiest burger around. That’s because the simple act of grinding meat profoundly changes the way it cooks, which makes grilling a hamburger a bit trickier than grilling a steak. Whether you’re simply topping it with ketchup or dolling it up with fancy fixings, the key to a successful burger lies in proper handling and cooking. From fast food drive-throughs to backyard barbecues, a hamburger is the iconic American food.
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