Cooking with Carol: Beef Up Your Grilling with Burgers and Steaks

With the warm weather upon us there is nothing more fun than eating outdoors. And there is nothing folks like better than steaks and burgers cooked on the grill. Here are a few tips for cooking beef that everyone will enjoy.

Most beef comes with its own flavor packets. Those packets are the droplets of fat marbled through the cuts. For those of you cringing right now, the good news is that much of that fat drips away as you cook, but it is the secret flavor ingredient.

That is why, for hamburgers, you will get more flavor by using ground chuck instead of ground round or sirloin. You can combine a mixture of those if you prefer a leaner burger, but don’t leave the chuck out altogether.

There is an art to forming thick but also flat hamburger patties, without manhandling them. Go easy on the ground chuck; it’s already been through a lot. Use about ⅓ pound of meat per burger. Gently form ground beef into patties. Press them together enough so that the patties won’t fall apart but without squishing them til the cows come home. The cow is already home.

Make the patties thick enough to reserve some moisture, but also wide enough that you don’t end up with a burger ball. After forming your patties, make a golf ball width depression in the center of each patty. This will help avoid the burger ball effect. 

Grill the burgers on medium to medium-high heat and sprinkling with coarse ground black pepper as you cook. Other than the pepper, let the burgers flavor themselves.

Same idea for steak. Steak tastes good on it’s own. A basic rule of thumb for steak is that the more it costs, the less you need to do to it to make it taste good. You may add a rub but go easy. If you add too much you’ll be tasting the rub instead of the beef. I recommend adding only coarse ground pepper to your steak and then let it do the rest. 

The key to good steak grilling is to not annoy your meat. Set it on the grill. Let that side cook and then flip it over and cook the other side ‘til it’s done. That’s it, and that’s all. Don’t do the flip, flip flip thing to your steak. You’ll make it dizzy. One flip and you should be good to go. Below is a grilling chart to get your filp timing down to a science.

Other BIG ideas: Preheat grill for 10-15 minutes, use tongs instead of a fork and let steak rest after cooking for 10 minutes to reabsorb juices.

Grilling:   Total Cooking Time

Happy grilling!