- 2 days ago
Bon Appétit joins burger scholar Chef George Motz, owner of Hamburger America, to see how the best smash burgers in NYC are made. Smash burgers got their name from the technique of smashing patties on a hot griddle to lock in flavor and create a crispy crust. Motz demonstrates how he makes The Chester, Oklahoma Fried Onion Burger, and his classic smash burger, which have made Hamburger America one of the most talked about burger spots in New York City.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00I'm George Motes and this is Hamburger America and today I'm going to make you
00:09three different versions of what I consider to be some of the best smash burgers.
00:13A smash burger is the original American hamburger. We call it a smash burger today as a way to define
00:20the method of how it's being made, which means it's being smashed. The best smash burgers are
00:25the ones that are made simply with only a few ingredients. Beef, cheese, bun and a seasoning of
00:31some sort. That's it. That's all you need really. Four perfect ingredients with method applied
00:35correctly makes the perfect smash burger. Now the grill. Hot flat top. This is worth cooking at
00:45about 360 degrees. If you're cooking at home, the best way to do is cook it in a cast iron pan inside
00:50your house with good ventilation. Some pretty basic rules to making a good smash burger. One is
00:55obviously the beef. We use 75-25 ground chuck. It's pretty fatty. Fat is flavor. You can see
01:03from the blend that it's pretty pink. It's like strawberry ice cream, which means that the muscle
01:08fibers and the fat are blended perfectly together, almost like sausage meat. Red muscle fiber mixed
01:13with big white chunks of fat. You can't smash that. It's not going to work because all that fat will
01:17render out and turn into a sort of a dried out Swiss cheese patty. If you grind, say twice with your
01:24butcher, or you have a grind that looks like it's blended together and it's pink, for example,
01:28it'll be the perfect beef for smashing. So we use about three and a half ounces of beef.
01:34One of the best ways to portion beef is to use an ice cream scoop. There actually are things called,
01:38they're called salad dishers that look like an ice cream scoop, but they have a trigger on the side.
01:43It's been sitting here for a minute. You can then turn the ball over. Look at that. It's a cooked patch
01:49on the other side, about 20 seconds, and that prevents from sticking here. You're pressing it
01:55on the flat top and you're defining where it's going to go by pressing it. And because it's round
02:00already, if you go straight down and apply pressure, you end up with a ball that turns into a round
02:07patty. Don't go and flip it and press it some more. Don't keep pressing it. You want to make sure
02:12that's all that's going to happen now. Some of that rendered fat is out already and it's becoming part of
02:16this sort of a hamburger confit. It's right there, using a fancy term for a not so fancy thing.
02:23This is a Lowry season salt. It's a little bit, not much, just a tiny bit. I think it's salt,
02:29garlic, turmeric, pepper. If you season your beef before, there's a tendency that for the meat to
02:34sort of seize up and get kind of hard. So you don't want to do that before. You want to do it as
02:38you're cooking because it's a science experiment. All this stuff is happening at the same time.
02:42The only people who actually ate hamburgers in the very beginning were factory workers who had to
02:46eat quickly and get back to work. And so they realized that by smashing a ball of beef on a
02:50flat top, it made it cook faster. It's a visual thing to know when to flip. The bubbles were
02:55starting to come through. The rendered fat is now tries racing to the surface. It's trying to get
03:00away from the heat. Sharp scrape tool. You'll watch the pink change slightly. You still want pink
03:05before you flip. If it's fully gray, you've overcooked it already. Then keep an eye on that.
03:10American cheese. American cheese is designed to melt. Also for speed, cheese is not going to melt
03:15the way you want it to until you cover it. Covered cheese melts faster. This is a professional
03:21melter. It's called a melter. But you can also use a bowl. A bowl or even a pot cover will work
03:27just fine. We use Martin's potato rolls because they're just a little denser. That's the bun
03:31toaster. There you go. Oh, perfect. I'm anti-brioche because there's too much sugar in the bun.
03:41You know, whenever you take a bite of the burger, you want to get some yeast in there.
03:43It's a piece of bread, not like a donut. Whenever you take a bite of a burger, the first thing you
03:48actually smell is not really beef. It's actually the yeast from the top of the bun because the bun
03:53is hitting you in the nose. Hitting your nose, you're smelling yeast first. And that's very
03:57important. Yeast is a very complex element and your brain desires those complexities. The ultimate
04:03all the way. Mustard, not much, just a little bit. Put two pickles on every burger. We use a dill pickle
04:08and onion. Not much, a little bit. The MOP. This is mustard, onion, pickle. No, no ketchup. No. You
04:15can put ketchup on if you want. Just, I don't want to put it on my burger. It's on the bottom also.
04:20People ask, why is it on the bottom? Why is it on the top? Because that allows us to prepare the buns
04:24ahead of time. So you can, it's called doping the buns. You can dope the buns ahead and just drop
04:28patties on them. For doing a lot of volume, it's much easier to do it that way. The bun is ready
04:33to go. All you have to do is drop the patty on top of it. We do the classic fold and twist. There
04:39you go. The method is based on speed just to be able to get it done, but it inevitably accidentally
04:46created a burger that is beloved for over a century. Oh, tasting America. Tasting history.
04:54Okay. Next, we're going to do the burger that made me somewhat famous. This is the Oklahoma
05:04fried onion burger. Same size ball of beef, everything. This time though, instead we salt
05:09the ball. Also we salt the surrounding area. Paper thin cut onions go in here. We have a secret
05:15slicer in the basement. Only way to make the onion burger is to use super, super thin onions
05:20like that. And we have a very special machine that does that, which is right over there, but I'm not
05:25going to show you. It's very special. If you're in the business, you already know what it is. I know.
05:29Fine. We use sweet onions because they caramelize faster because of the high sugar content. Also,
05:35you could almost eat it like an apple if you had it in your hand. It's very, very sweet. One burger
05:39gets about that much. So it seems like a lot, but it cooks down. Onions lose their moisture and
05:45they, when they caramelize, they shrink and they become more concentrated. If you need to get your
05:49onions this thin, good luck. A mandolin is set to the thinnest you can go. It's probably the best
05:55thing you can do for a home slicing of onions. In fact, it's the Japanese mandolins, which can get
06:02down to the thinnest possible setting. The French ones won't do it. Sorry. Wash your fingers, please.
06:07It's very dangerous. During the workman's shop strike of 1922, everybody was out of work in
06:14Reno, Oklahoma. So an enterprising young man decided to take the same volume of
06:21beef, the onions, and press the onions into the burger to see what happened. And he was just trying
06:26to extend his beef supply for the day. And what he ended up with was inventing an incredible burger
06:31that we still make a hundred years later. Unlike the smash burger, which cooks very quickly,
06:36the onion burger, it's a slow cooker. It takes patience and it takes time. We're going to sear the
06:40side. We press down and then we're going to flip it over. So the onions are now hiding underneath
06:45and they be caramelized with the beef tallow or the rendered beef fat. As the rendered fat goes down,
06:52the heat comes up. Onions are caught in the middle of that. The onions are now part of a combination,
06:58this transfer of heat and beef tallow over and over and over and over again until they give up.
07:04The moment when the onions give up is the moment when they taste the best.
07:07Cheese. Normally, if you're an Oklahoma user, there's no cheese. I mean, they do put cheese
07:11on if you want, but that's like the younger generation. If you're under 60, for example,
07:15that's the younger generation. So this bun does not get toasted. It goes right on top of here.
07:20This is a science experiment that's happening. It's steaming. It's what I call beef steam.
07:25It's also a great name for a band. I've talked about it. I do a thing, which I've never seen them do
07:30in Oklahoma, where I actually, I gather the onions and put them underneath so they don't burn.
07:33And I started to check. I can actually see what's going on now. We're getting there.
07:37We're not quite there though. It's actually pretty hard to overcook the burger at this point because
07:41the onions act as an insulator. Prevents us from overcooking the burger patty itself. So
07:47it stays very moist. Here we go. Let's give it up. See that? Ooh, surrendered.
07:52Look at that sweet surrender. That's it. See that? There's no more white in there. You don't see
07:55the onions are... Just by comparison. See that? Look at that. So here we go. Very important
08:04part of this burger. Something called the pinch and pull, which is just done for speed.
08:09You put the heel, which is now on top, is now on the bottom. Basically pinch the whole thing
08:13together gently and you pull it off. That's it. We serve this one with two pickles. But
08:18the pickles don't go on the burger. The pickles go next to the burger. You're supposed to eat
08:22them while you're eating the burger. You can't see the onions. People say, it's not an onion
08:25burger. I don't see onions. Like, oh, dude, they're in there. It's a very unique flavor.
08:31When you take rendered beef fat and you cook onions in that fat, you end up with something
08:35that is very, very unique, especially in the hamburger world.
08:41Okay, next, the Chester, my hometown burger. Burger I grew up with. Think of American cheese,
08:50white bread grilled cheese with butter with a hamburger patty inside. I know you're thinking
08:55patty melt. Not a patty melt. This is a Chester. The patty melt was invented in San Francisco
09:00in the 1930s by a guy named Tiny Nailer. So traditionally, a patty melt is rye bread, Swiss cheese, grilled
09:07onions with a patty inside. That's a patty melt. Everything else is just a hamburger on toast.
09:12This is a Chester. This was invented by a bunch of drunk teenagers in 1973 because they didn't
09:19have buns. It's as simple as that. They came up from the bar. They were looking for something
09:23good to eat. Let's make cheeseburgers. Oh, we don't have any buns. So they put it on bread.
09:31They put it on toast. Same burger, same smash. And this is the way it's been made for over
09:3850 years. Now, seasoning this time is salt. They use salt on the Chester. That's what they
09:43do. They've done for half a century. Toast. Now, this is the critical part. Right on the
09:51flat top, rendered butter. And for speed, melters, melter covers. There you go. Once this patty
10:00is cooked, it's just going to go into the grilled cheese. And that's it. Super fast. On there.
10:04And you can burn this pretty easily. Keep in mind, you're making two different things. You're
10:08making a burger and a grilled cheese. Grilled cheese inherently cooks at a lower temperature
10:12and a smash patty cooks at a higher temperature. It should be. So you need to separate those
10:18two things and add the patty to a grilled cheese environment as opposed to just trying to create
10:23everything in the same environment. It's very important. This is the burger I grew up eating
10:28at the beach. I grew up running down the beach to get these when I was a lifeguard. It's an
10:32off-menu burger. You won't find it on the menu, but if you come in and ask for it, we'll make
10:36it for you. The greatest thing about this burger, you know exactly what it's going to taste
10:40like. No question about it. Actually, it might taste better than what you might think. Nice,
10:47crispy outside. The cheese is perfectly melted. The burger is not too thick. I'd never get
10:52tired of this. I'd never get tired of this. And people come back to this restaurant all the
10:56time. They know it's going to be a good tasting burger because they know that's going to make
10:59them feel good. Burgers make you happy. And happiness is healthiness as far as I'm concerned.
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