The growth of the ‘gourmet’ burger and burger chains over the past few years has been massive, every high street has a ‘dirty’ burger joint serving some amazing burgers with wonderful topping, normally too big to pick up. Customers are not just looking for a slice of tomato, a gherkin and a bit of shredded lettuce, they are looking for us to be creative.
‘Gourmet’ burger chefs take normal burgers and make them extraordinary. Burger chefs have dedicated their lives to carefully balancing flavours to end up giving you the very best burger possible. When you’re treating yourself, you want to have that kind of dedication behind the flavours that end up going into your meal. You don’t deserve anything less than that. The proportions of toppings to meat, cheese, and bun are going to be balanced to perfection.
Let’s start with the cooking, a good char-grilled burger gives the best flavour, a mix of beefy-ness and a grilled BBQ flavour. Like other meats, treat it to some seasoning and let it rest when cooking, now grill the bun, toasting the cut side will keep it crispy and stop it going soggy.
The filling is the next bit, and this is the point we can ‘dare to be different’, so what do we need? We have covered the burger and bun so let’s add some big flavours, I like to use great ingredients from different countries to add difference to our burgers.
The Indian – Crisp sweet potatoes Bhaji, Pickled cucumber and mango chutney
The Spanish – Crispy Chorizo, melting manchego cheese, Padron peppers & Romesco mayo
The Mexican– Crisp tortilla, Pico salsa, jalapenos, sour cream and guacamole
The French– Blue cheese, garlic mayo and crispy onion rings
The American – BBQ pulled pork, shack sauce and Monterey cheese
The good thing about all these options is that you can adapt them to make a vegetarian option, a great quality plant based burger grilled on the BBQ remove the chorizo and change the BBQ pulled pork for a BBQ Jackfruit, so no need to have a completely different menu.
You can even change up your Sunday offer with ‘The Roast Dinner’ Burger, add in sliced roast beef, use a Yorkshire pudding as a lid to the burger, horseradish mayo and serve with roast potatoes and gravy, so many ways to make the humble burger gourmet.
Kindly contributed by Steve Midgely Consulting Development Chef, 30 years experience in fine dinning, creating fantastic experiences at Michelin star restaurants.
