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What are the best burger recipes and cooking tips?

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Chef Jeff Woodward
Private Chef

03/31/25 4:11pm

I like an 80/20 mix of meat to fat ground chuck or if you are grinding your own ribeye and fillet. I do not have a preference on cooking surfaces but do like either a smashed pattie or one cooked on a grill. 6–8oz balls or patties is the size I like to cook. For the smashed pattie you will need the grill to be extremely hot because you wont to develop a nice crust on the outside. You place the ball of burger meat on the hot grill and let set for about a minute before taking a heavy metal spatula or burger weight and push the ball into a pattie about a half inch thick . Let that cook for about 2 more minutes before flipping. Let cook for a few more minutes on the other side. I like my burgers medium rare to medium. Just before they are cooked, I like to add cheeses to the pattie. My preferences for cheeses are havartti and good old american cheese whether its white or yellow. You can also use provolone. These cheeses give you that perfect melt.

For seasonings on the burger I like salt, my brewers blend from Tuff Momma Salts works great, white pepper, granulated garlic and a little lime powder.

Toppings is where you can get crazy. I love fried eggs, bacon and fried avocado on mine with mayo and ketchup. I am not a big fan of a lot of garden items on a burger but there are a lot of options. Butter lettuce is a great lettuce for the burger, heirloom tomatoes, caramelized onions, and pickles of course. Some other fun items to place on your burger are fried pickle coins, fried jalapeño bottle caps, thin sliced and fried onion straws, or cheesy tater tots. - just to name a few. Let your imagination go wild when topping your burgers.

And lastly, always toast your buns. I like a good brioche bun or a good pretzel bun for my burgers. The more you put on the burger the sturdier the bun needs to be.

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Sean Rivera
Restauranteur and Award-Winning Chef

07/17/25 8:53pm

For burgers, the fattier the better. I like a good 70/30, so I want 30% fat in there. A lot of people like an 80/20. You can buy it from wherever you buy meat and whatever's economically sound for your budget, but if you do go to a butcher, you want to put some chuck and brisket in there.

I was cooking burgers the other day, and I started them on the charcoal grill to give them that flavor, but then I finished cooking them in the air fryer. We can put them in the air fryer or the oven, or even in a cast iron pan, and finish them to give them the nuances that you want from being grilled and all the flavor profiles that you want. For example, in a cast iron, you can sear it and give it a crunch or caramelization. So what I did was I took the burger where it was par-cooked, still medium rare, then put it in the air fryer. I put a piece of foil under it and cheese over it, and when it melted, it made that crunchy cheese around the side that you would get from a flat grill. So it was just so texturally good, plus it had the good saltiness of the cheese with the char-grilled meat, it was just this balance of deliciousness. You can control those different variables by utilizing different cooking methods.

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