The smash burger is the food truck burger: two thin patties smashed in a screaming-hot pan, with a deep brown, crispy crust across the whole surface. It takes 15 minutes and beats most restaurant burgers. The whole secret is one move: smash the meat once, hard, in the first ten seconds.
Ingredients, for 2 double burgers
- 400 g (14 oz) ground beef, 15-20% fat, in 4 balls of 100 g
- 2 brioche buns
- 4 slices of cheddar (or American cheese)
- 1 small onion, sliced paper-thin
- A few pickle slices
- Salt, pepper
- A little butter for the buns
The sauce
- 3 tablespoons mayonnaise
- 1 tablespoon ketchup
- 1 teaspoon mustard
- 1 tablespoon chopped pickles, plus a splash of their juice
- 1 pinch of smoked paprika
Before cooking
- Mix the sauce and keep it in the fridge.
- Form 4 balls of 100 g without kneading the meat. Keep them in the fridge until the last moment: cold meat smashes better and stays juicy.
- Butter the cut side of the buns and toast them 30 to 40 seconds in the pan over medium heat. Set aside.
Cooking, 4 minutes per burger
- Empty pan, high heat, 3 minutes. It must be really hot: this is the cook that needs the most heat. Do the water drop test. No oil: the fat in the meat is enough.
- Put down two balls, well apart. Cover each with a square of parchment paper.
- Smash straight away, hard, with a wide spatula or the bottom of a saucepan, down to 5 mm thick. Press for 10 seconds, then peel off the paper. Only once: smashed later, the meat loses its juice.
- Salt, pepper, and scatter the sliced onion over the raw top.
- Don't touch for 2 minutes. The edges turn brown and lacy.
- Scrape under the patty with the edge of the spatula, keeping all the crust, and flip. The onion now cooks underneath.
- Add the cheese right away. 45 seconds to 1 minute, and it's done.
- Stack the two patties on top of each other, right in the pan.
Building it
Bottom bun, sauce, pickles, the two cheesy patties, a little more sauce, top bun. Eat it right away: the crust doesn't wait.
The smash rule
Smash at the start, never after. In the first ten seconds the meat is cold and raw: smashing it creates total contact with the metal, so you get crust over the whole surface. After that it has started cooking, and every press pushes the juice out into the pan.
The three mistakes
A pan that isn't hot enough. The meat turns grey instead of browning. You need high heat, no compromise.
Meat that's too lean. At 5% fat, thin patties dry out. Use 15 to 20%.
Too many patties at once. Two per 28 cm (11") pan. Crowded, they cool the pan and release water.
Food safety
As with any ground beef, it must be fully cooked: 5 mm patties cooked 3 minutes over high heat are. For a thicker patty the method is different — the pan-fried burger patty, cooked to 71 °C (160 °F) in the center.
What to serve with it
Crispy potatoes, caramelized onions instead of raw onion, and for a bistro twist, peppercorn sauce instead of burger sauce.
Eighteen burgers and street food recipes, including the Oklahoma smash and the midnight patty melt, are in the Grand Book (PDF in French).
The pan
The smash needs everything a non-stick pan hates: high heat, an empty screaming-hot pan, and a metal spatula scraping the bottom. The pan we film with is 304 stainless steel with no coating: nothing to baby, free shipping worldwide, the 25-recipe book included, and 60 days to send it back, even used.
