Round burger patties

[Loony BoB]

I like burgers. I eat burgers with various patties. Most of them have a flat patty, but occasionally I will stumble across one of these "gourmet" beef patties.

http://thecheapgourmet.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08/31/gourmet_burger.jpg

These patties annoy me. They are not designed for human mouths in any way. They are designed to make the burger look fancy. Maybe, just maybe, they are designed to taste better, but in my experience they never bloody do. A good patty doesn't need to be a perfect circle, it doesn't need smoothed off sides, but it should be at least vaguely flat, dammit.

What's your take on the round burger patty?

[Bubba]

It is an abomination. If it comes with lettuce, tomato and cheese then it is just insanely impractical.

Don't get me wrong, I'd give it a go... but it would be awkward as hell.

[Loony BoB]

Looking at my work canteen's lunch menu today, I suspect I'll be having one of these for lunch. I'm both looking forward to having a burger and hoping that the patty will be flatter than last time.

[Pheesh]

It is not hard to flatten one of these at all once you have started to eat it, I don't see what the problem is. My favourite burgers don't come with these, but they don't Impact my enjoyment of a burger with quality ingredients inside of it.

[Mirage]

you're meant to eat gourmet burgers with a fork and knife

[Night Fury]

In my experience those patties start out pretty flat but because it's very fresh ground meat they sort of.... Swell in the pan? They go rounder a bit so I don't think they're intentionally like that it's just because its fresh ingredients, and yeah you can definitely flatten them down

[Loony BoB]

But it's so much better if they make it flat in the first place. When people cook patties like that, they know they are going to turn out round (well, assuming they've made them more than once). You can easily make them flat and they are easier to eat, tastier and - should you wish to eat them with a knife and fork - they are also easier to cut.

Thankfully my lunch had a flat patty involved and it was amazing. Moroccan lamb with salsa, mozzarella and nacho chips. Oh man.

[Psychotic]

ENTER THE BURGERSPHERE

[metagloria]

I'm guessing the theory is that flattening them would squish the delicious juice out so they leave them plump for flavor? But from a practicality standpoint, I couldn't agree with you more.

[SquallsMist]

Spherical burgers are there to make them look larger than they are, its pretty much as simple as that. A good burger should fill the bun so you get a bite of beef, toppings and bun each time. A round burger means you get some bites of lettuce and bread and then finally you get to a meatball in the middle. Terrible.

Burgers that swell a lot in the pan are poorly minced and have big bubbles of air in them so they swell up and sometimes pop hot grease every where.

Perfect patty: thick, minced well, flat. Gotta keep it thick so there's a rare/medium center. Now I want a burger.

[noxious.sunshine]

If you're cooking a burger yourself, make an imprint on one side with your thumb. It helps it stay flat rather than warping up like they tend to do.

I don't really like big thick patties either though. Or little ass hockey puck sized ones that wind up being smaller than the bun.

I'd rather have a double burger with two flatter patties than one huge one though. IDK why

And now I want Checkers. A baconzilla burger.

And I only like ketchup mustard pickles and onions of it's just standard.. And maybe bacon. But I also love one with Swiss or provolone or pepper jack with sauteed onions and mushrooms and mayo. So yum

[escobert]

I don't like thick cuts of meat on my burger/sandwich. I want it all proportional.

[Shoeberto]

My trick has always been to just cut the sandwich in half. It's far more manageable. My mouth is small so it keeps me from making a giant mess.

Most fancy/"gourmet" burger places in the US give you burgers that sound delicious but are a goddamn mess to eat, but I've had a pretty high success rate with this approach.

[Shorty]

Burgers are fucking burgers. The only judgement I pass on my burger is how it tastes as I shovel it into my wide open trap, not about how it looks on my plate.

[escobert]

Burgers are fucking burgers. The only judgement I pass on my burger is how it tastes as I shovel it into my wide open trap, not about how it looks on my plate.

It doesn't taste good when there's too much meat :p

[Pheesh]

Just as an aside, you're all glossing over the fact that a larger burger patty means you're much more likely to get a perfectly cooked, juicy center of the meat. There is nothing in this world as gross as dry, crumbly, overcooked burger mince.

[Loony BoB]

There is nothing in this world as gross as dry, crumbly, overcooked burger mince.
You can incorrectly cook anything, including a round burger patty. That doesn't excuse "gourmet" burgers, it just shows that they don't know how to cook a good flat burger patty right. If it's gourmet, it should have a good shape and good taste. Although as always, "perfectly cooked" will be subjective to some extent.

[Pheesh]

There is nothing in this world as gross as dry, crumbly, overcooked burger mince.
You can incorrectly cook anything, including a round burger patty. That doesn't excuse "gourmet" burgers, it just shows that they don't know how to cook a good flat burger patty right. If it's gourmet, it should have a good shape and good taste. Although as always, "perfectly cooked" will be subjective to some extent.

There's nothing to excuse. If the mince is good quality, well seasoned and cooked correctly then why wouldn't you want more of it?

[Loony BoB]

Well, look at it this way.

You can cook tagliatelle pasta perfectly and then you can press it together to the point that you have a big round ball of pasta in which sauce can not penetrate, and the sauce can be cooked to perfection too, and you can serve it with a ball in a bowl of sauce and say that everything is perfect.

Or, you can not press the pasta together, and have the sauce dispersed amongst the pasta nice and evenly.

Now, both will technically taste the same, but the preparation of one leads to a considerably more enjoyable and evenly flavoured meal.

You could argue "Ah, but it's better to have the ball than to have undercooked pasta!" and I will just :stare: because maybe if you just cook it and prepare it properly then you won't have to worry about undercooked pasta or poorly prepared pasta.

I suppose you can probably get some foolish people to favour the ball variation by labelling it "gourmet", though. :p

So yeah, I'd eat the pasta ball via cutting it up and dipping the pasta into the sauce, but I'd much prefer it was good from the start. Likewise, I'll eat these burgers, but would it kill the supposedly gourmet chef to not just cook the patties a little flatter, so that I can better enjoy the meal? It's not tricky. There's a reason when you have a meatball sandwich that it has multiple smaller meatballs rather than one big fat one.

[Night Fury]

That is the worst thing I've ever read in my life. I don't even know where to begin BoB, Jesus christ.

[Loony BoB]

Cheers for the constructive post. :up:

The more I read about how a good burger patty should be cooked, the more I find that I'm pretty much on the money. What someone said earlier about warping of burgers and air pockets and all that... dead on. It doesn't help the juiciness of the meat either, apparently.

[Shorty]

Comparing the cooking of pasta to the cooking of burgers is comparing apples and kittens. The two have absolutely nothing to do with one another and are prepared extremely separately with a massive variation on the acceptance of thorough cooking. Pasta is unacceptable to not be cooked all the way. Burgers have a scale on how they can be cooked.

I don't even know how you came up with that comparison and it makes zero sense.

[Psychotic]

Are pasta balls a thing?

[Skyblade]

Gourmet food is intended for food snobs. It's purpose is to look nice, and have lots of "depth" that they can talk about with big fancy words. Complex flavor is nice, and far more important than good flavor.

The round burger is horrible.

It is harder to eat, since it can't actually be a sandwich, being too big for the mouth. It's also prevents you from layering things on top of it, since it doesn't have a flat surface to support another layer (or the bun) well.

It's also harder to cook, since it is much thicker, and thus heat takes longer to penetrate it. So the outside is likely to be overdone by the time the inside is properly cooked. It's impossible to properly apply a sauce to (yes, you can cook a sauce into the burger, but that changes the sauce's flavor, the burger's texture, and how well the burger holds together), since the surface area to which you can apply the sauce is far smaller than on a flat patty of similar volume.

[Pheesh]

Complex flavor is nice, and far more important than good flavor.


Complex and good are not mutually exclusive, so I don't know what you're trying to say here. Just because you don't enjoy breaking down different elements that have gone into a dish (or wine/beer/film/videogame/anything) doesn't mean that it is less than a burger from McDonald's that will taste the same every time and provides instant gratification with taste.

@BoB, that comparison made no sense... What we're talking about is the difference between spaghetti and tagliatelle, not pasta that has been warped into some new dish. One is a matter of preference, or possibly tolerance for some people, the other could universally be described as strange. Also, because you've used the word ball a few times in this thread let's clear this up, never have I had, nor do I even understand how you could cook, a ball shaped hamburger pattie. Every burger I've had is still essentially flat, but some will swell much more in the middle. If you're using ball in the literal sense (which I would assume you are because you compared these burgers to meatball subs) then you have just hands down had a terrible burger.

[LocoColt04]

And now I want Checkers. A baconzilla burger.I haven't even THOUGHT about Checkers in years. Holy crap. Want.


It doesn't taste good when there's too much meat :p<insert expected "that's what she said" joke>


It's also harder to cook, since it is much thicker, and thus heat takes longer to penetrate it. So the outside is likely to be overdone by the time the inside is properly cooked.This has always been my biggest issue with these things.

[noxious.sunshine]

There's one across the street from me! Come over! :D Their fries are so fucking bomb omg.

I really miss A&W & Steak N Shake though. Steak N Shake fries > McDonald's ALL DAY LONG. Fuck what you heard.

I honestly don't think I've had a "gourmet" burger though unless you count the crunchy campfire burger from LongHorn (It's got bacon, bbq sauce, cheddar, and house made potato chips on it), but I don't really count LongHorn a gourmet place.

Shake Shack was really yummy too tho.

[Quindiana Jones]

Right. Get this. Round burger patty in a bun. Squish it down and the juices run into the bun.

Juicy wonder burger, instead of "ooh, dry bread but YUMMY MEAT" burgers.

[Bubba]

Right. Get this. Round burger patty in a bun. Squish it down and the juices run into the bun.

Juicy wonder burger, instead of "ooh, dry bread but YUMMY MEAT" burgers.

Yes but then you run the risk of too much juice going into the bread and then you'll have... wet bread.

As we all know, wet bread is the most disgusting substance on the planet after marmite.

[noxious.sunshine]

I saw a burg joint on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives (a Guy Fieri show) that makes..

A butter burger.

Sounds so gross but looks so yummy. Lol

[Loony BoB]

Wow, my point went way over some heads apparently. You guys need to up your reflexes to Drax level.

The point I was making is that shape is important. Making a pasta ball like that is absurd, and you guys focused on that absurdity too much rather than realising that's the point I was making. As for overcooking and undercooking, yes, you can cook beef to different levels, but let's just assume that both pasta and beef were both cooked to the ideal level - like a good chef WOULD ensure.

Now, the pasta ball is absurd, nobody eats something shaped like that.

The beef patty should be seen as absurd, nobody should want something shaped like that. If it's supposed to be squished down, then they may as well just have squished it down for you at the time of serving.

Regarding juices, it shouldn't make a difference so long as the patty is of a decent thickness. If you want it to be juicy all the way through, that can be done with a flat patty. Ditto with no juice. Ditto with having a pinker center. All of these things can definitely be done if you cook it right. Some things will require faster cooking, some will require more heat, but whatever you're after it can likely be done. If it needs to be round for fine, particular reasons, whatever. I've never had one of these gourmet burgers where squeezing the burger patty down suddenly made it better. I had to try doing this and it just serves to damage the bun, in some cases breaking the bun or the juices pouring out of the bun.

EDIT: I agree with Phil regarding complex and good not being mutually exclusive. I've just never had a gourmet burger that actually had this round beef patty enhance the taste. Every time I feel it would have been better with a flat patty. I've enjoyed the burgers alright regardless on most occasions but I still get annoyed that it could have been made better by going flatter. Complex is good though. Complex means I can have pineapple, beetroot, egg and salad on my Kiwiburger and love it.

[Night Fury]

I'm going to make you a round burger one day and you're going to love it.

[Loony BoB]

I probably will, but I'll probably have this lingering thought in the back of my mind that it would have been even better if the burger patty was flat. :shobon:

[noxious.sunshine]

But a round burger os just a freaking meatball

Amirite!?

[Loony BoB]

Pretty much!

[BlackFire]

Almost any size will do. But the really big giants like 2-6 feet in diameter and 5 inchs fat is one that I can't finish in one sitting.