“Here’s a dumb thing that grill chefs do,” opens Deadspin writer Chris Thompson's polemic against conventional cheeseburger grilling methods, published last week. “They flip the burgers on the grill, and then, while the burgers finish cooking, the chef lays slices of cheese on the top of the burgers, where presumably the heat of the grill will aid in the melting of the cheese.”
All wrong, Thompson says. This practice relies on a miscalculation—an overestimation, really—of how much heat a slab of cheese requires to melt, ignoring the fact that patties carry vestigial heat that allows cheese to melt just fine when the patties are removed from their heating surfaces. Subjecting your cheese to such aggressive heat makes it look like a thin layer of foil atop a burger, folding onto the burger’s sides. What's more is that he claims it leads to a terribly dirty grill, strewn with shreds of dairy.
Thompson also cautions against heaping the burger’s accoutrements, produce, and condiments. This, he claims, guarantees you'll mutate the cheeseburger into “a slick, sliding mess” where cheese is, once again, the casualty, cruelly pushed aside.
Instead, he recommends:
- Before you remove the burger patty from the grill, put all the cheese you’d like onto the top bun.
- Take the burger patty off the grill and lay it down onto the cheese / top bun.
- Stack the bottom bun with condiments and whatever else your heart desires.
- Slap the top half of the burger onto the bottom.
And there you go. It’s a surefire way, Thompson says, of making sure that the cheese melts and stays to the top of the bun so that it’s spread out evenly across the burger’s perimeter. That way, every bite is soaked with pleasure.
Thompson’s irreverent article—a mere blog post on the internet!—certainly struck a nerve: Just take a look at the comments section, where he’s pilloried for expressing an opinion and presenting it as fact. Our friends at the Today Show devoted a whole segment to the issue wherein they expressed bewilderment over Thompson’s methods, echoing popular opinion. When the Today Show polled its viewership on Twitter, consensus overwhelmingly skewed towards putting cheese on the burger while it’s still on the grill.
Quite the contrarian stance, Mr. Thompson. I’ve got no real horse in this race, so I’d like to know: Do you find his method all that radical? When’s the best time to put cheese on a cheeseburger? Please let me know. Vote in our poll. We'd like to hear from you.
Written by: Mayukh Sen
Popular on Food52
32 Comments
In a hurry - bottom bun, onion, burger, cheese top bun.
i think everyone bristled at his "drop the mic" attitude. when it comes to food, i can't think of an instance where there is only one right way to prepare something. as long as it ends up being a sandwich and not lap decoration, it is done correctly.
Example a slice of provolone or Swiss cheese has the ability to change it's state more rapidly, than hard cheddar. Then there is the quantity factor and the dimensional values.
In conclusion, if you enjoy your burger, the way you make it, who cares?
And I've actually found that the flipping it upside down when it arrives at your table, or just after stacking at home, solves the soggy bottom dilemma (neither of which is factored into his supposition):
" In that scenario, two terrible things happen. First, the bottom bun becomes soaked-through and crumbles between your fingers as you eat your way through the burger, bringing the whole thing closer to collapse with each bite. Second, the top bun remains all too structurally intact. It’s likely sitting on a mound of produce which means it’s getting colder every second and losing any of the benefits it would have received from being toasted."
- http://www.lamag.com/digestblog/you-should-flip-burgers-upside-down/
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