- 5 days ago
In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and culinary instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to make the best cheeseburger sliders at home. If you need to feed a crowd fast, sliders are your secret weapon; small, quick to assemble, and easily batchable, these delicious beef sliders in Hawaiian rolls are sure to go down a treat at any occasion.
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00:00If you need to feed a crowd fast, sliders are your secret weapon.
00:03They're small, quick to assemble, and you can build a whole tray in about 15 minutes.
00:07The meat is one slab, the buns are in a slab.
00:10All you really got to do is give it a little cut, stack everything up, and everyone has burgers.
00:15This is everything you love about a White Castle slider, but homemade and much better.
00:21This method starts out with a cookie sheet or a half sheet tray.
00:25I have two pounds of 80-20 ground beef.
00:27That means there's 80% meat, 20% fat.
00:29That's a really good meat-to-fat ratio for a burger.
00:32I have some finely diced white onions, salt, and pepper.
00:35It's really that easy.
00:36You don't even need to oil the pan.
00:37There's enough fat in the meat to oil the pan.
00:40And all you really have to do is take the meat out of the packages and press it in.
00:44This is a critical part to our recipe because you really want this to fit the tray.
00:49So it's almost like you're patting out pizza dough into your tray.
00:52This is going to make the burger bind together so it's not crumbly.
00:55It's also going to make our sliders nice and even when we cut them.
00:59The 80-20 has a good fat-to-lean ratio.
01:01I feel like if you're going to use a leaner meat, you're going to get a dry and crumbly slider.
01:05And that's not what we want.
01:06We want this to have a little meatiness, a little juiciness to it.
01:10Basically, fat equals flavor.
01:11And that's what we want.
01:12As you pat this down, I want you to also remember that when this cooks, it's going to shrink up.
01:16Take the time to spread it out as even as possible so that when it does shrink up, you have nice, even slider.
01:23So that's good.
01:24I have my meat evenly spread.
01:26I take my onions and I just spread them on the top.
01:29Make sure you get in the corners and on the edges.
01:32The finer the onions, the better because you don't want to have big chunks of onions.
01:36You want these to kind of melt away and steam a little when we actually put these in the oven.
01:40That's beautiful.
01:41And then, of course, we're going to season this up.
01:43Some fresh cracked black pepper and some salt.
01:47And don't be skimpy with the salt.
01:49I know a lot of people are like, oh, chef, you put too much salt on things.
01:52I feel like I have a pretty good practice hand on salt.
01:54I'm not just dumping it on.
01:56I'm going high when I season.
01:57I'm trying to get a nice dispersion on my salt.
02:00But you want this to be seasoned well.
02:02You want to taste that meat.
02:03And that's it.
02:04That's the burger meat in the pan, ready to go into the oven.
02:07What I'm going to do now is I'm going to pop this in the fridge, get all of my toppings and my buns ready.
02:12Right before the party starts, I can pop these in the broiler, cook them up, and finish assembling my sliders.
02:20So I have the buns, and I have prepped for garlic butter.
02:23I like to put a little bit of topping on the top of my buns.
02:26So I'm going to make a garlic butter with some parsley and just brush it on top before they go in the oven.
02:31I think it just gives you a little more kind of that savoriness to our dish.
02:35And it makes them just slightly more impressive than just a plain slider.
02:39I have a pot.
02:39I have a stick of butter.
02:41As this butter starts to melt, I'm going to get my garlic, and I'm going to add it to the pot.
02:45I don't really want this to brown at all.
02:46I just want to kind of scent the butter with the chopped garlic.
02:49And I'm not too worried that the butter's not melted.
02:51I really want a nice, strong, garlicky flavor.
02:54My heat's at medium-high right now, but I'm just trying to melt it a little quicker.
02:58I'm going to lower it down once the butter melts to about medium.
03:01I have some fresh chopped parsley here.
03:03So I'm going to wait until I add my parsley to the end, right before we put the burgers in the oven so it stays nice and green.
03:08I can smell my garlic.
03:11It's a nice kind of mellow, sweet flavor.
03:13And that's it.
03:14The butter is melted.
03:15The garlic is lightly cooked, not brown at all.
03:19I'm going to take this.
03:20I'm going to put it aside.
03:21And then I'm going to get to my buns.
03:22So I'm using Trader Joe's Hawaiian Rolls.
03:24The thing here is you do not want to separate these buns at this point.
03:29Leave them in a slab.
03:31This is what makes everything so quick and easy when we put these together.
03:35You can use whatever roll you like.
03:36I just happen to prefer the Trader Joe's Hawaiian Rolls.
03:39If you like a potato roll, use a potato roll.
03:41It's up to you.
03:42I just like the sweetness of these rolls.
03:44What we want to do is get our knife, a nice serrated knife, and cut them down the middle.
03:50So that I have basically a slab of slider bun.
03:54They are totally intact, and that's how you want them to be.
03:57We are not building individual sliders here.
04:00We're building them in slabs, and this is what makes it so quick and easy.
04:07We're going to broil these burgers for about five to seven minutes, and then we're going to build our sliders.
04:11Broiling these burgers is going to keep them juicy.
04:13They're not going to cook for a long time, so we retain a lot of that juiciness.
04:16We don't want to roast these in the oven and dry them out.
04:19If you're worried about undercooking this, keep it in for a little longer.
04:21But basically, because the meat is so thin that five to seven minutes should cook it all the way through.
04:26Okay, let's throw these in the oven.
04:29It's been about six or seven minutes.
04:31You'll notice that there's a fair amount of liquid in here.
04:33I'm just going to drain it off into a bowl.
04:36Meat is ready to go.
04:37We're ready to build.
04:38I have my burgers.
04:39I have my buns.
04:41I have my cheese.
04:41I have everything next to me here.
04:43So I'm going to take my lids, and I'm going to put them aside for now.
04:47I'm going to get my meat, and all I really got to do with this is cut it in half with my spatula.
04:53Fairly even.
04:53And then the meat.
04:57Look at how perfectly it fits onto our slider buns.
05:02And then we take our cheese.
05:04Cheese it up.
05:05Don't be afraid to overlap your cheese.
05:07We're going to put a fair amount of cheese on here.
05:09I want them to be really nice and cheesy.
05:12I'm probably going to do like one and a half slices per.
05:15Don't be afraid.
05:16I like to use the stuff that they slice at the deli.
05:18I think it has a little more flavor.
05:20I think it has a better texture than the slices that are in cellophane.
05:24But if that's all you have, use it.
05:26I like to sing the praises of American cheese.
05:28Some people don't.
05:29But I think it's really delicious, especially for sliders.
05:32And now what we're going to do is we're going to top with ketchup.
05:35You don't have to be too precise.
05:40Now I have my pickles.
05:41One pickle per.
05:42Right on top of your ketchup.
05:44Three across, four down.
05:49Two little ones there.
05:52All right.
05:52And then we take the lids, put them on top.
05:56And then we're going to take our garlic butter.
06:00Now I take the parsley and add it because I want the parsley to kind of have that nice freshness and nice color.
06:05Mix it into your garlic butter so you have a nice garlic parsley butter.
06:09Brush this really well.
06:10Get all that garlic and that butter onto your buns.
06:15I try and scoop up some of that nice stuff.
06:18Right.
06:18If you don't want to add the garlic butter, that's fine.
06:21These burgers are really good.
06:22I'm just kind of like making it a little extra special.
06:24Chef franking it up.
06:25You definitely can't get this at White Castle.
06:28So we're not even finished yet with these.
06:30You can eat them now and be totally satisfied and happy.
06:33Everyone around you will be satisfied and happy.
06:36But there's one last step.
06:37I'm going to cover these with foil.
06:38Put them in the oven for about five minutes so that everything gets a chance to steam and meld together.
06:46It's going to melt the cheese.
06:48The buns are going to get soft and squishy.
06:50And it's just going to be perfect.
06:51The oven's at 350 and we're going to put them in there for about five minutes.
06:55All right.
06:56So we're ready for the big reveal.
06:58Let's see how they look.
06:59I got a little knife.
07:01And what I'm going to do is I'm going to cut in between where all the slices are.
07:05I think these look spectacular.
07:08Anyone who likes sliders is going to love these.
07:11Plus, we got a big stack of burgers in fractions of the time it would take to make this many burgers for everyone on the grill and then making individual patties.
07:22We got a big stack of sliders there.
07:26All right.
07:27It's time to taste.
07:27And I don't know if I can eat the whole tray, but I'm going to just take one for now.
07:31I'm going to stay in control.
07:32Okay.
07:32I got one in the back right here.
07:33I think my bite was a little too big.
07:39It's got everything that a classic slider has.
07:41It's meaty.
07:42It's cheesy.
07:42The bun is nice and soft.
07:44A little sharpness of that pickle.
07:45The ketchup.
07:46The garlic butter just kind of adds that little, like, you know, pinch of goodness at the end.
07:51And one of the best things about these is that they take little to no time.
07:54You can get everyone involved.
07:55They're fun to assemble.
07:57Absolutely delicious.
Recommended
9:39
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