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Ground meat, inexpensive, practical, conceptually terrifying, and delicious. But, are there ways that we can improve it, augment it, help it perform better, and use it in new exciting ways? That's the question I'm here to ask and answer. These are ground meat hacks. This episode is sponsored by Cometeer. If you've seen them on this channel before, you already know this is not normal coffee. It's something totally new. You really don't have to sacrifice quality for convenience. The coffee is perfectly brewed, then flash frozen to lock in the flavor and freshness.
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gone at cometeer.com/babbish20. The link is in the description and get $20 off your first order. We can't really talk about ground meat hacks without talking about burgers, because that's all they are. They're just ground meat. So, are there any hacks that can make our burgers more flavorful, juicier, tenderer? We're going to find out first by adding mushrooms to our burger meat, for which we obviously need a control group. I'm going to make a smash burger that is a 3-oz ball of beef placed on a ripping hot skillet, allowed to caramelize a little bit on the bottom before being flipped and smashed with a hot smasher. Once it's nicely caramelized on one side, we're flipping it over, getting some caramelization on the other side, seasoning with a
little bit of salt, scooping off, and buning up. For the regular burger, I've got a 6-oz patty that I'm going to sear on both sides until it's medium well because these burger hacks are about making burgers juicier when they're not medium rare. So, this is going to be best for relatives who don't like bloody meat, or you, if you don't like bloody meat. I don't know you. All right, here's our control burgers. Control burgers? You mean like mind control? No, I mean like uh a scientific control, if you will. Um What is that? I don't know.
I'm not a scientist. So, we don't know what we're doing here. I'd like to talk about the burgers, okay? Let's keep the conversation about the burgers, okay? I just want to talk about Rampart. We have, of course, the classic smasher. Uh smash burger's notoriously not very juicy. That's not really the idea behind a smash burger, so we will forgive it for not bleeding juices everywhere. Yeah, pretty dry as bone. Very little blood from that stone. You really got to squeeze it and you get a little bit of juice. It's a smash burger, people. Nothing to see here.
Move along. Now we have our thick burger, which I really tried to push past medium, but it looks It's It's like a It's a hefty medium. As you can see, it's juicy, but being pushed past medium, it's not very juicy. So, yeah, no surprises here. If you cook ground beef past 125, 130, you're going to end up with a progressively drier burger. Let's see if we can't safeguard it that a little bit. The first hack we're going to try is from America's Test Kitchen. This involves grinding up some mushrooms. In this case, I've got 12 oz of baby bella mushrooms that I'm quartering and placing in the jar of a food processor. Quartering just helps make the food processor's job a little easier and helps more evenly
process the mushrooms. Now, as you process them, you're going to discover that they turn a ghastly shade of brownish-red. Jesus, would you look at the color of this? It's disgusting. How should people who aren't excited about it looking disgusting proceed? Uh I would give them the same advice that I would give somebody who's about to lose their virginity. Close your eyes, hold your breath, and hope for the best.
Is that good advice for losing your virginity? No. Is it good advice here? No. Maybe don't ask me for advice. Now, we have to par cook these mushrooms by microwaving them for 3 minutes, stirring halfway through. A process that turns out to be less than pleasant. That's done. Oh. Ooh, if you've ever done magical mushrooms, uh this is what they smell like. Oh, and that's really gnarly. Woo. Okay. Anyway, once we've microwaved them for 3 minutes, we're going to press them through a fine mesh sieve to get any excess moisture out of them. Then we're scraping them into a bowl and let them cool completely.
Now, for an even more upsetting part of the day, blending those mushrooms together with ground meat. I have 1 lb of 85/15 ground beef. You want to use a higher fat beef here to help further safeguard it from drying out. So, let's try them out and see how it performs. We're going to make a smash burger and, of course, the thick burger. All right, folks. This is a ground beef episode, but why limit ourselves to ground beef? I'm going to see if some of the tricks to prevent smash burgers from sticking to your smash actually work. One of them, very popular, is to wrap your smasher in aluminum foil, shiny side out. Right? So, the aluminum worked very well on first attempt, but then once it got fat on it, it became sticky again. So, you
want to wrap your press in aluminum and keep it hot. That'll keep it from sticking to the burger. There's the thick burger cooked medium well. Let's see if the mushrooms improved anything. The smash burger looks to be pretty juicy, actually. No fooling. No kidding. Let's see what we got. Mhm. Pretty juicy burger. For a smash burger, especially. I do detect mushrooms. But mushrooms are very meaty. That's why they're used in a lot of meat replacements. So, it's not It's definitely not an unwelcome flavor.
I think if you had something as simple as American cheese on there, you probably wouldn't detect it. Yeah, no, I mean, like there's there's moisture retention. Got a decent crust on it. I do kind of feel like maybe the crust is inhibited a little bit cuz I was blasting those with heat and they weren't browning super duper well. I think it might have added moisture, but at a trade-off. So, let's see what the thick burger's like. A lot of juice. It's very juicy for a medium well burger. That's pretty insane. Oh. It tastes like mushrooms. It definitely tastes like mushrooms. But, again, that's not necessarily a negative add.
You said that the mushrooms aren't a negative add to a burger, but you recoiled after biting in. Are you being confusing intentionally? I don't know. Are you being antagonistic intentionally? Yes. Next up, we're going to try a hack I've seen more on social media than anywhere else. Mayonnaise burgers. On paper, this kind of makes sense. You're introducing fat and egg yolk to the mix, which As I say it, maybe doesn't make sense, but let's try it. People swear by it. See what happens. So, I'm going to add about 1 Tbsp to a half pound ground beef. You'll notice I'm doing a half pound because
I don't want to waste too much meat and I don't have high hopes for this one. But, we're just going to go ahead and work that mayonnaise into that beef, as upsetting as that may be. Form into our requisite test patties. You'll notice that I'm pressing like a dimple into the center of the thick burger. That's going to help it prevent from soft balling when it cooks. The center is going to rise as it heats, and if you just have a flat burger, that's going to end up doming. But, if you press a kind of like shallow concave divot into the top of the burger, that will puff up, and it'll be a nice flat burger at the end of the day. Don't forget to season with kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper. Give it a flip, and we're
cooking this likewise to medium well. Let's see if mayonnaise may make a better medium well burger. I'm not really sure if it added anything to the smash burger, but I definition you need to smash a smash burger, and I think that pushed out a lot of the fat. There was a lot of fat in the pan, so I think a lot of that mayonnaise fat might have leaked out. It does It tastes like a normal smash burger to me. But, will it help safeguard a normal sized burger? Way juicier than I expected an overcooked burger to be. Yeah, if you have friends or family who don't like pink meat, this might be a way to still give them a juicy burger. I know that your instinct says you need to punish them or
something with a dry burger, cuz that's what they wanted. But, don't be a dick. Just you know, everybody deserves a juicy burger. Didn't really work for the smash burger, but for the regular size, mayonnaise does add a fair amount of moisture. Pretty cool. Next up, one that I'm pretty excited about, baking soda. It's pretty common practice to add baking soda to ground meat to prevent it from losing too much moisture and from getting too bouncy and slippery. So, I'm not sure if this is
going to work very well with the thick burger. We're effectively velveting the meat here. But, for the smash burger, I have very high hopes. So, for a half pound of meat I'm creating a solution of about an eighth of teaspoon of baking soda to a tablespoon of water. You would double this, of course, for a pound of ground meat. So, do like a quarter of a teaspoon per pound. You're mixing it in with water to make sure that it's evenly distributed throughout the meat and that it's dissolved and doesn't stay in a powder form. Form those guys up and check out that crust. Baking soda lowers the temperature at which the Maillard reaction occurs. So, you get more profound browning faster. Hence why I'm
super stoked about the smash burger. All right, our baking soda burgers are ready for testing. The crust it got on these is unbelievable. Definitely a little bit of juice in there, but not nearly as much. I can't really detect any off or metallic flavor. It tastes incredibly beefy by virtue of the awesome crust we're able to put on it. It might be worth doing just for browning alone. Not sure. Let's take a look at what a thick burger. This one I cooked probably a little more medium. No, I didn't. Oh, yeah, it's like medium plus. Oh, that's a juicy burger. That's a juicy burger considering how wildly overcooked it is. Look,
it's barely pink, not even. Really beefy, not picking up any off metallic flavors that you sometimes get with baking soda. And then the crust that we got on this thing is unbelievable. The color on it is outrageous. Like it it's the crust that of my dreams. It's what I always try to achieve but never really get there. And uh you can do that with a lot of heat, but let's say you're, you know, making burgers in your apartment and you don't want to smoke the hell out of it, this might be a better way to get the get a crust on there. It also tenderizes it, so it's not tough even though we beat it around a little bit to incorporate. It definitely shrunk a bunch as a result, so make sure
that you're making uh patties well bigger than the bun. Really interesting effective to foolproof bur- burgers, basically. I'm curious, why didn't we call this episode I tested burger hacks? Well, because we're not just testing burger hacks, Bradley. We're testing ground meat hacks. Surprise! One of the more popular ground beef hacks is the smash burger taco burger thing where you take a little ball ground beef and you smash it using the tortilla creating an all-in-one taco experience. To me, it seems like a greasy more
difficult version of just browning some ground chuck in the pan like you did when you were a kid with some taco seasoning, but perhaps it's so fantastic that it's worth doing. Let's find out. I'm adding some hefty pinches of taco seasoning to my beef. It feels weird to do this while it's raw, but it's the only way we're going to make it work in this scenario. So, I'm massaging that taco seasoning in there, busting off a 3-oz patty, and using the tortilla to smash the patty down into the hot cast iron skillet. Then, once I've got some nice browning, we're going to flip it over, and I'm already a little shocked about how good that looks. Like, I was expecting this to be a grease ball. But, we're going to top it up with cheese,
wait until the cheese is mostly melted, and then hit it with the normal taco trappings. Shredded lettuce, finely diced tomato, a little bit of sour cream. Let's see if this taco is something to taco about. Sorry. No, I'm not. I'm not sorry. Let's see if this taco is something to taco about. These are Vista Hermosa flour tortillas, by the way, best in the grocery game biz. Okay, I really like that. I mean, these tortillas are the best, so that's doing a lot of favors, but most of the ones I've seen online are really greasy. The tortilla just ends up frying and swimming in grease, but it's almost perfectly dry
by virtue of the fact that I used 90/10 ground beef. You probably don't want to go with something too fatty lest you soak your tortilla. But, doggone if this isn't the best white people taco I've ever had. Doggone it. And that you can trust it coming from me. It is, however, I think a form factor that might lend itself better to other cuisines and sandwiches. Let's find out. In a second. So, for the gyro, we're going to use 1 lb of ground lamb. That's my favorite meat for gyros, but you could use chicken, you could use beef, you could whatever. To that meat, we're going to add a half teaspoon of dried
oregano, half teaspoon of onion powder, half teaspoon of cumin, half teaspoon of crushed up dried rosemary, about 1 Tbsp total fresh chopped parsley and mint, which I was going to add to the meat, but then I realized it's going to burn, so we'll save that for later. And we're hitting it with about a teaspoon of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Normally, seasoning before cooking ground meat is a no-no. It ends up giving the meat a very tight texture, but in the smash burger realm of things, in the smash gyro realm of things, it's not going to be that big of a problem. And we need to get the seasoning in there before it hits the
griddle. So, go ahead and massage that in there, get it evenly distributed, and we're going to break off the usual 3 to 4-oz hunk, and this time use a piece of pita to smash the meat before flipping and toasting the pita on the other side. Now, the pita's a lot thicker than a tortilla, so you're probably going to have to flip it back over to finish cooking the lamb. You don't really want it to be medium rare in this case. So, once I've gotten rid of all that pinkness, I'm going to make sure that the pita is thoroughly toasted. Don't overdo it, though, cuz it will dry out and it'll be impossible to fold over, as you'll see. Topping with tzatziki, shredduce, thinly sliced red onions, finely diced tomatoes, thinly sliced cucumbers, crumbled feta,
and our chopped mint and parsley. That's a mean-looking gyro, hero, euro, whatever you call it. All right, let's see if it works in the gyro, hero, euro format. I overcooked the pita. It's all splitting on the bottom. But like it's perfect gyro. It looks, tastes, and feels almost exactly like the genuine article. Like that is the quickest, most shortcut at-home gyro thing I've ever seen. Cuz normally it is quite arduous. You need to make a huge meat patty, somehow, you know, either cook it while rotating it, or cook the whole thing, slice and fry it. It's a big involved operation. This, you just spice the meat, smash, and go.
It's perfect. God, I love a gyro so much. Now I want to try something called lazy dumplings or pan dumplings, where apparently you just prepare ground pork the way that you would for potstickers. And then instead of wrapping them up in a dumpling wrapper, which is time-consuming and difficult, you just kind of mound the meat into a hot pan, and then cover them with the dumpling wrappers, and then create a skirt using a cornstarch slurry on the bottom to hold everything together. And what you end up with is like a big pull-apart dumpling kind of. So, let's see if that works. For the meat, I've got 1 lb of ground pork that I'm seasoning with about a teaspoon of kosher salt, 1 tsp of soy sauce, 1/2 tsp of toasted sesame oil, about an inch of grated
ginger, and two cloves of crushed and chopped garlic, 1/4 tsp of white pepper, and a 1/4 cup of thinly sliced scallion greens. Go ahead and mix that all together until all the spices and scallions are evenly distributed. And that's our dumpling filling, which I'm going to roll into probably like 1-oz balls. You want them to be little tiny meatballs that could be eaten in two bites. Now for the dumpling skirt. So, this starts with 1 cup of water, to which we're going to add a tablespoon each cornstarch and flour, as well as a 1/4 tsp of baking soda, and a 1/4 cup of vegetable oil. Go ahead and tiny whisk that together, and keep that tiny whisk in there because this mixture is
going to settle, and you're going to need to whip it up again before you pour it into the pan. Now, I'm going to do this in a small format in a nonstick pan because my earlier attempts were not so successful. So, into a ripping hot skillet, we're placing four of our meatballs and then topping each one of those balls with a dumpling wrapper. And you want to kind of press it down around the meatball. You want it to really encase the meatball. It can't just be draped over top. Then we're going to pour in about 3 Tbsp of our cornstarch slurry. You want enough to coat the bottom of the pan. Then we're covering that up. This is going to steam the meat and dumpling wrappers. Then once most of the liquid has evaporated, we're going to uncover it and let the
rest of the water evaporate. Once that boils off, it's going to create a thin lacy skirt that's going to crisp up nicely in the oil. Go ahead and give that a little bit more time on the heat until you see golden brown all around. And we're going to flip it out onto a plate to varying degrees of success. So, it's not supposed to look like dumplings. You little sh- I messed up, okay? I don't know how to do it right. Just pick up the pieces and eat it like a dumpling taco. That's what this episode's all about. Dumpling taco. Just make that the title of the episode.
Every dumpling taco hack. All that's to be said is a juicy, flavorful proper dumpling experience. It's just open-face, if you will. Yeah, I think I'm sure there's a way where you can better encase them. I really tried to pinch the wrapper around them to sort of like give them a little house. Like I screwed them. And that definitely helps, but they're still kind of loose in there. And um might just take practice, but personally, I would rather just fold dumplings. You know, this is it's definitely a shortcut, but folding dumplings is kind of nice. It's kind of meditative. And then you end up with this very beautiful
thing instead of this kind of like, "Well, I guess it's dumplings." Yeah, maybe this isn't one of the better hacks, but it's still quick and easy, and it still tastes good. So, as long as you just eat it with a little bit of care, you're golden. Now, we're going to go a little crazy. One of my favorite restaurants to take visitors from out of town to is Quality Italian in Midtown Manhattan. They're famous for many things, one of which is a pizza chicken parm pizza that specifically is made from chicken parm. The crust itself is the chicken parm. So, it's a giant chicken parm patty that they deep fry, cover with sauce and mozzarella, cut it up
like a pizza. So, I want to make that at home. To do so, we're going to lightly beat one egg and add it to 1 lb of ground chicken along with a half teaspoon each of dried basil, dried oregano, dried onion and garlic powder, 1/4 tsp red chili flake, and a 1/4 cup of Italian breadcrumbs. Now, you can adjust this with more breadcrumbs as necessary. You want to have a nice firm loaf of meat, not something too loose or sloppy. And I almost forgot some freshly grated parmesan, maybe 1 to 2 oz worth. Mix that together until you have a nice chicken parm farce. That's what I'm going to call it. Now, onto a parchment paper lined rimmed baking sheet, I'm going to press the chicken mixture out into a giant
patty, which I'm going to place in the freezer for at least an hour. I want it to be completely firm because I need to bread it, and it's way too soft to do so at room temperature. So, you want it to be totally almost completely frozen. Then we're going to do the usual three-station breading technique, a light dusting of flour, a thin coat of beaten egg, and a hefty coating of Italian-style breadcrumbs. You can use panko here if you want to go really crazy, but I kind of want a classic old-school chicken parm feel. Make sure it's evenly and thoroughly coated. You don't want any bald patches happening. And then I'm going to
shallow fry this thing. Deep frying it is possible, but sometimes that can make the patty curl, and it's also pretty prohibitive at home. You need a lot of oil and you need a big vessel to deep fry this thing. So, I'm just going to shallow fry it in some light olive oil in a nonstick pan. Go ahead and give that a flip once it's nice and crunchy on the first side. I definitely got some hot spots there, which I'm just going to scrape off with a knife, little bit of post-production. Then, once it's crispy on both sides, we're going to place it on a wire rack set in a rim baking sheet, then place that wire rack over some aluminum foil to prevent anything burning or scorching on the baking sheet. Evenly coat the top with a thin
layer of tomato sauce and a thick layer of shredded whole milk low-moisture mozzarella, and then throw that guy under the broiler until it's browned, spotty, and beautiful. Hit that with a little bit of freshly grated Parmesan, some fresh basil leaves, slice it up like a pizza, and serve. I definitely made this a little too thick. You might want to make it thinner for this size pizza. This would have been more appropriate if it was like a New York-style chicken parm pizza, like this big. Here we have it, chicken parm pizza as popularized by Quality Italian here in New York City. That's chicken parm if I ever tasted it. I wouldn't say that this is a hack uh so much as a showpiece, but using ground chicken to make chicken parm make chicken cutlets
is kind of a hack because at first I was like, this is not much less effort than just using a chicken cutlet, just using a chicken breast. But, it lets you shape it into whatever form factor you want. It lets you control the spices. It's is predictable and relatively easy. It's a pretty good hack. And if you want to pull out all the stops and make chicken parm pizza, all your friends are going to be like, "Where did you come up with this idea?" And you don't have to even tell them it was me cuz it wasn't. It was somebody else. So, what have we learned today? Ground meat is pretty awesome and can do a lot of things. If you're going to cook a burger past medium rare or make a smash burger, there are myriad ways that
you can improve it, its crust, its flavor, its juice retention, that the smash taco and by extension smash warm up or gyro is a really good idea and actually works surprisingly well. You might need to use a lot of cornstarch slurry in order to close up your dumplings or you need to eat them by hand like little tacos. And chicken parm pizza is a whole lot of fun. Thank you guys so much for watching. Please leave a comment below. What do you want to see next on this show? What are your favorite ground meat hacks? Which ones you going to try? Which ones did I miss? What's going on with you? Did you get a haircut? It looks great. Thank you so much. I hope you guys give these a try for yourselves and I hope you do it with
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