How to Make Restaurant-Quality Burgers at Your Backyard Barbecue

Cooking Discussions Cooking, Cookbooks, Ingredients
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Outside only.

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Love this thread. I am looking for advice that ensures my backyard grill efforts will not be “hockey pucks.” Our guests always seem to gobble up the burgers, so I guess they are OK, but I always review my own product as h-p’s and I would like to improve. The other unavoidable seems to be timing- getting all the burgers off the grill and staying piping hot while 15 people straggle to the table, other sides are being brought to the table, etc, and all the while my burgers are losing temperature and getting even closer to room-temp hockey pucks! The layers of aluminum foil over the burgers sometime is no match for a meal that is 20 minutes removed from the burgers coming off the grill. Please pass the relish…

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you might be overmixing the meat. Just grab a handful and press into a patty form. Dent the middle. If you must mix something into the beef, do it gingerly, without breaking up the meat to a mushy texture.

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Our burgers - home ground - are handled very gently. But you can’t control it if they come off the grill 20 minutes before people eat. You can get everything else on the table, you can ‘warn’ people when it’s getting close, and despite what might seem like poor etiquette, grab a plate and start serving yourself so they all get the point.

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Putting them on a cookie sheet organized by doneness & putting the cookie sheet back in the grill using the residual heat or with a burner on its lowest setting will help. Can also use the indoor oven on lowest warm setting.

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20 minutes… wow… I have barely enough patience to let them rest, no less get cold. But I do like my food piping HOT.
I can only guess that something my friend does might work. That is, he schmears mayo on both sides of the buns and places the burgers in between and places all sandwiches in an aluminum tray, covered with aluminum foil.
He always has plenty of condiments on the side. Sliced tomato, sliced onion, BBQ sauce, ketchup, hot sauce, mayo, etc. All room temp, like the burger sandwiches, and mostly help to get things moist enough to eat.