fake shack burger

• 份量: 4 burgers

配料

Burgers

1 pound freshly ground beef (3/4 pound ground sirloin + 1/4 pound brisket is recommended, but if you can’t find, use chuck) with an 80/20 fat ratio

Sauce

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 1/2 teaspoons juice from a pickle jar

1 1/2 teaspoons ketchup

1 teaspoon yellow mustard

1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

Assembly

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more if needed

4 potato rolls, see Note

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Kosher salt, to taste

Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

4 slices cheese, American or whatever you like on burgers, if you’re making cheeseburgers

Four 1/4-inch-thick tomato slices

Thinly sliced pickles, if desired

4 burger-sized pieces green-leaf lettuce (I used curly green leaf lettuce)

步骤

Prepare the meat: Form the meat into four equal-sized four-ounce meat “pucks,” roughly 2 1/2 inches thick. Place them on a plate lined with plastic wrap or waxed paper and freeze for 15 minutes, but no longer. We don’t want to freeze the meat, but we’d like it to be extra-cold when it hits the pan.

Make the sauce: Combine all of the ingredients, tasting it and making any adjustments you’d prefer. A dash of hot sauce, perhaps?

Toast the buns: Heat a griddle, large cast-iron skillet (my first choice and recommendation), or large heavy stainless-steel skillet over medium heat. Melt the butter and place the buns, cut-side down, in the pan. Cook until cut sides are golden-brown, about 1 to 2 minutes. Place toasted buns on four plates; you’ll keep using your griddle or skillet.

Cook the burgers: Remove patties from freezer. Increase heat to high and add 2 tablespoons oil to the griddle or skillet — you’ll need this only for your first burger batch; after you’ve made a couple or if you’re scaling the recipe up, the fat from the earlier burgers will be sufficient — heat until oil begins to smoke, at least two minutes. Working one at a time, add a patty to griddle and immediately flatten it to a 1/2-inch thickness with a heavy spatula and something with weight and heft (the handle of a second spatula, a meat pounder, etc. see details up top) to help it along. You’ll have to “hammer” harder than you might think to flatten the patties out. A second spatula can be used to help remove the hamburger stuck to the flattening one, so not to tear the patty. Generously season with salt and pepper. Repeat with remaining patties.

Once the first side is deeply browned with crisp, craggly edges, about 1 1/2 to 2 minutes for medium — mine were all quite black when they were flipped, and yet still totally pink inside when we cut into them; it will be hard to overcook them at this high heat — use a spatula to scrape underneath the patty and flip it over. Cover with a slice of cheese if making cheeseburgers, and cook 1 to 2 minutes more, until melted. Repeat process with remaining patties.

Assemble burgers: Transfer cooked patties to toasted burger buns. Spread top buns with prepared sauce. Top burgers with tomatoes, lettuce, pickles (if using) and immediately dig in.

备注

Shake Shack serves their burgers on a potato roll.

They’re only toasted on the inside. At the burger stands, they use the aforementioned “rotating drum perpetually lathered in melted butter” (swoon), but at home, we’re going to toast them in our frying pan.

Shake Shacks use Pat LaFrieda high-quality ground beef, and while they can’t say what fat ratio or blend they use, they told the writer that “80/20” was a good place to start. I bought mine at a small butcher shop in the West Village which uses a blend of brisket, short rib and sirloin. 80/20 is fatty; it will splatter like crazy. But that’s why god invented splatter screens and paper towels, right?

The patties used there aren’t patty-shaped but arrive in two-inch tall, four-ounce pucks. They’re cooked extra-cold from special fridges — we’re going to copy this by putting our in the freezer for 15 minutes first — not for food safety reasons, but when that cold puck hits the very hot grill, it browns extremely well but retains its juices because the fats haven’t fully melted inside.

Smashing the pucks into patties is surprisingly hard! Of course, at Shake Shacks they have specially designed heavyweight smasher spatulas; at home, Epicurious recommends that you use two spatulas, one for pressing and the handle of the other to kind of hammer the pressing spatula flat. I did this on my first batch and it was not terribly easy, especially with the splatters of hot grease making me want to pull my hands far away from the pan. I then switched to this insane meat pounder I bought a few years ago and it was so much easier. As most people don’t buy 2-pound meat pounders just for the heck of it, find something in your kitchen with a solid weight to make this process easier.

Nobody, of course, has the recipe for their Secret Sauce, but I rather liked Epicurious’s version