All-American Cheeseburger

Hi, I'm Josh Ozersky, and you're watching eHow.com. Today, I'm going to show how you make a cheeseburger. Cheeseburger is the most important sandwich in the American culinary canon. It is our national food, is very simple , which means it has to be made very perfectly. This is how you do it. I have here some beautiful 80/20 ground chuck La Frieda hamburger beef. This is the perfect, fresh, fatty, delicious hamburger meat. We all can get it at our groceries, always look for 80/20, always get ground chuck. Here I have a black cast iron skillet. I have here in my hands, happens to be customized, because it's me. A reinforced, flat spatula with no little holes in it, ideal for smushing hamburger down. Now, before I get that started, I take my bun. Again, a simple, white and rich squishy bun, this one happens to be Wonder. Now, before I have done anything else, I took some of this meat and I throw it into the pan here. Why did I do that? The burger has to go into a pan that has got a little bit of grease going in, and it has to go into a very hot pan. Now, however, I've cooked a little bit of this meat here. It'll be a little, a little treat for me afterwards. And while that's happening, I'm going to get the meat ready, very simple, do it the same way every time. You take some meat, it should be about the size, let's say, a handball. If you don't know what a handball is like, think of it as a size of a meatball, a big meatball. The reason for that, is that the hamburger is not a large object. If you're hungry, you make two of them. Now, I'm going to smush the hamburger a little bit, so that it's a slightly flattened puck like object. I'm going to take salt, the salt i snot only the flavoring, but the crust of the hamburger. I do one side, I flip it over, I do the other. Get used to making these moves, because I want you to make them over and over and over again. Here is my bun, it is round, soft and mushy and toasty, though. I have my meat, I have my bun, I have my piece of tangerine colored American cheese. The only topping that should ever be on top of a hamburger. I'm going to take a little bit of butter here, now. Step one, the butter goes down. You should figure on jacking your heat up to the max. Unless you have one of those weird ceramic ranges that you know, nobody can understand. Alright, there is my butter. I can see that it's going to be ready, because it's going to have little bubbles that are going to start to form and pop. When those bubbles stop popping, that's just when it starts to brown, that's when the burger goes down. Because this burger's going to cook and it's going to cook fast. There it is, it's starting to brown. Now, I'm going to do the drop, pop and press method. As soon as I drop it, I pop it, once I've popped, then I press it. Why do I do it like that? Because when it's been popped, it has the brown in it and it won't stick to the spatula. Now, another thing that people commonly say, a common misapprehension about hamburgers. Is they think that you should never press the hamburger. Because they say, if you press a hamburger, all of the juice is going to roll out of it. Believe you may, there's no juice to roll out when it's cold. When it's cold, the juice is in the form of solid, white fat that you can hold on your hand and look at. Now, once it's melting, once it's warm. Then if you press it, the juice will flow out and that would be a disaster. But right now, we're good to go. Meanwhile, look at this hamburger, it's round, it's small, it's thin, its got plenty of salt on it. It's a little, delicate, humble object, it's Rhode Island, not Texas. This hamburger is a perfect, little Haiku of a sandwich. Once it starts to get brown and crusty, I'm going to lay the cheese on it. The bun's going to go on the cheese and it's going to be done. Well, right now, this hamburger's been in here for like, 45 seconds. 30 seconds from now, there's going to be a beautiful hamburger right on this cutting board. And you have nothing to say about it. Looking at it, it's already telling me, Josh I want you to flip me. Alright, if that's what you want, that's what I'm going to do. Now, flipping is key, the sharp, the spatula you see, has got a beveled edge. Because you want to really be sure to dig cleanly, so that it comes right up. At Steak and Shake, they actually sharpen the spatulas. Alright, now, it's going to flip and you're going to see it's nice and brown, notice, I'm not pressing it. Now, the cheese goes down, the bun goes on top of the cheese. This burger flips over, it's waiting to receive it's precious cargo. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, and that's how long it needs to brown on the other side. There you have it, all you need to know about how to make the perfect cheeseburger. I'm Josh Ozersky, thank you for watching and come back again on eHow.com.