Page 19 - February 2022 Barbecue News Magazine

the cardboard tube in the center of a roll of paper towels, easy to store, and it uses a really well designed smartphone app. It sells for about $249.
Sous vide ensures even
cooking, preserves mois-
ture, allows natural en-
zymes to tenderize, and if
you cook it long enough,
at temperatures at or
above 131°F, it can pas-
teurize meat, eliminating risk. Yes, you can pasteurize at that temp but it takes two hours. The beauty of sous vide is that the meat cannot overcook because it cannot rise above 131°F, the water temp.
For a 6 to 8 ounce medium-rare burger, set the temp to 130°F for three hours to be perfectly safe. After 3 hours, take the burger out of the bag, pat the surface dry with a paper towel, and sear the snot out of it on a screaming hot grill to get a great dark brown maillard crust. During the searing the internal temp will rise to about 135°F, still perfect medium rare. And safe. And fantastic.
3) Zap ‘em. Irradiation is a great way to pasteurize meat. The process uses electromagnetic energy to kill anything living with- out heating the meat or noticeably changing its texture, flavor, or nutritional value. And no, it does not glow in the dark because ir- radiation is not radioactive! This technique is used to sterilize medical devices and it has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, the World Health Organization, the American Dietetic Association, and the Mayo Clinic, among many others. The beauty of irradi- ated meat is that you can simply remove it from the package and cook. No fuss, no muss. Alas, because of unfounded fears, irradi- ated ground meat is hard to find in stores, but you can find it on- line. The most prominent source is Omaha Steaks which irradiates all its ground meat. Get some and feel free to cook that juicy burger to medium rare.
4) Don’t use lean meat.
If you cook to 160°F, much of the moisture from water is gone, but moisture from melted fat remains, and fat is flavor. So buy meat that is 80 to 70% lean (20 to 30% fat). Don’t fear the fat. If you live to 80 you will eat more than 80,000 meals. An occasional fatty but delicious burger won’t kill you. You can ask the
butcher to custom grind it for you at many grocery stores. That’s a good way to get really fresh meat. Pick a nice fatty chuck steak from the case, ask for a coarse grind, and form your patties gently by hand so there are pockets inside for the juices to hide. If you are grinding your own, you can add beef fat to up the juiciness. Just ask your butcher for some white beef or pork fat trim. You want it white. You will need a calculator to determine how much fat to add and I have just such a calculator for you on Amazin- gRibs.com on this page https://amazingribs.com/tested- recipes/hamburger-sloppy-joe-salisbury-steak-recipes/hamburger -secrets-how-zen-master/
5) Don’t salt the interior. Now this is one of those funny tricks of meat science. As you can see in the pictures by the Amazin- gRibs.com Science Advisor, Dr. Greg Blonder, if you mix salt in with the patty, it helps the proteins hold onto moisture, but it also
makes the meat more compact and dense leaving fewer pockets for melted fat to hide. Losing fat is more tragic than losing water. So don’t salt the in- terior. You can mix garlic, pepper, onion, whatever you like into the meat, but salt the exterior just before you throw it on the grill.
6) Make a Jucy Lucy. Invented by Matt's Bar in Minneapolis, MN, this is an inside out cheeseburger, and that's right, there's no "i" in Jucy. Before the cook-
ing begins, take a
thin patty, top it with a slice of Kraft Sin- gles American Cheese, fold it in half and in half again, place it in the center of the patty, and lay another patty on top. Pinch the edges of the two patties to- gether thoroughly and tightly to seal in
How to make well done burgers juicy
If you can’t use pasteurized meat, then you can still make burgers cooked to 160°F juicy.
FEBRUARY 2022
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