Perfecting the Flat-Top: Essential Burger Skills

Cast iron drops in temperature after each hamburger. Steel doesn't. That's why I developed it I come from a steel family and I understood the material could exceed cast iron for high-heat cooking.

Cook smashburgers at on a preheated frying pan or steel. You want to hear that sizzle the 2nd the beef hits the steel.

Flip, add cheese, and cook for another to melt the cheese and finish cooking. You have to work quickly. This is high-heat, high-speed cooking. That's what makes it so good. is the best ratio for smashburgers. The 20% fat content is necessary for creating a juicy hamburger and crispy edges.

Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

Leaner beef will result in a drier, less delicious burger. Stick to 80/20. Crispy edges come from 3 things: (500-550F) Get your frying pan ripping hot. The fat renders and french fries the edges. Optimize contact with the griddle. Heat, fat, and surface contact. Master those three things and you'll get best crispy edges whenever.

The strategy needs direct, high heat from a frying pan to create the signature crust. You can bake hamburgers in the oven, however they will not be smashburgers. They'll just be ... baked hamburgers. is the timeless choice it melts perfectly and has a velvety texture. Cheddar, Swiss, and provolone are likewise terrific if you want to blend it up.

Secret Ingredients for Top-Tier 2026 Burgers

Season on the griddle. Do not season the beef before forming the balls it can make the texture mushy. I utilize mine for pancakes, bacon, eggs, grilled cheese, quesadillas, seared steaks, and more.

Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

Once you understand how steel holds and moves heat, you start utilizing it for whatever. I did Andris Lagsdin. I invented the Baking Steel in 2012 after checking out that steel performs heat better than stone. My family has run Stoughton Steel Business in Hanover, MA since the 1960s, so I grabbed a slab from my papa's store, evaluated it, and the rest is history.

Every Baking Steel is still made at our household shop. Cast iron is great. If you're serious about smashburgers, steel is better. It shops more heat, recovers much faster, and offers you a constant crust from the very first hamburger to the last. Get it ripping hot, work quick, and make some bad ass hamburgers.

What started as a Kickstarter task (boosted by an early endorsement from Kenji Lpez-Alt on Serious Eats) has actually turned into the go-to tool for numerous countless home cooks. His obsession with high-heat cooking goes method beyond pizza. After years of screening smashburgers on cast iron, stainless steel, and every frying pan on the marketplace, he created the Skinny Frying pan and Mini Frying pan specifically for stovetop cooking engineered to hold heat the way only steel can.

The Skinny Frying pan is his go-to tool for smashburgers in the house. He's the co-author of Baking with Steel with Jesse Olson Moore and teaches high-heat cooking through his free online classes and dishes.

Comparing Flat-Top versus Traditional Grill Techniques

It's a basic meal, and it takes just a few minutes to prepare and a few minutes to prepare your tasty frying pan hamburgers. Select your hamburger patty, pick your cheese, and choose your buns and filling.! Cooking up your hamburgers on a flat griddle is a great way to get all the taste you can out of both your hamburger patty and your cooking surface area.

These flat, smooth cooking surfaces can take a great deal of heat, and they can provide your hamburger the ideal sear, and a well rounded, even cook. We enjoy griddles since they are so versatile, and while generally they are used on stovetops, we routinely prepare hamburgers on a griddle in the oven, and even over an open campfire.

If you're using your frying pan on the stovetop, in the oven, or on the campfire, there are a couple of universal guidelines to follow when you're cooking burgers: If you have actually cast iron frying pans, they are going to require a layer of seasoning to secure the surface area. This makes it non-stick, and also protects it from rust.