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Top Chef Burgers In Your Own Backyard

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Ever since Daniel Boulud stuffed a burger with truffles and fois gras, chefs have been racing invent their own iconic ground meat experience. But let’s be honest. Nobody really wants to eat a burger covered in gold leaf. When you want a burger, what you really want is high quality beef.

Seems simple, right? But really the choices are endless. The fat to meat ratio, whether it's grass-fed or corn-fed, how the beef is aged after butchering, and whether the steer was a common Holstein or a storied Wagyu breed all produce a different style – and backyard barbeque aficionados and celebrity chefs alike have their favorites.

At Manhattan’s Colicchio & Sons, that blend is naturally raised Angus beef, says Colicchio & Sons' chef de cuisine Christopher Lavey. "The ratio of fat to lean is perfect for how we cook it: fast, on a cast-iron grill,” says Lavey. “It sears well and stays nice and juicy. ‘Naturally raised’ fits well into the ethics of our company, too."

Top Chef star Tom Colicchio sources his ground beef for both Colicchio & Sons and the famous burger at Craft from the butchers at New York’s DeBragga. For decades, some of the most well-respected chefs in Manhattan, from Jean-Georges to Daniel Boulud, have turned to DeBragga for top quality beef for their signature burgers. Home chefs have caught on as well. Love the burger at Tao? DeBragga’s can ship their unctuous Wagyu burgers direct to your door. Is the lean, pure beef flavor at Cookshop more to your liking? DeBragga’s grass-fed patties, from cattle raised in Upstate New York on open fields are for you.

The butchers and customer service staff at Debragga are like burger shrinks, chatting about what is important to the griller before suggesting the ideal mix. "We spent months working with DeBragga's team on perfecting BURG's signature secret blend, tweaking the measurements over multiple tastings to get the mouthfeel and texture just right,” says Chris Siversen, chef and owner of the critically acclaimed Jersey City restaurant Maritime Parc and the much-anticipated BURG in Newark, opening this month. “It was a fascinating process."

DeBragga’s is used to working with picky chefs, but is happy to direct novice chefs to their best burger experience as well. DeBragga's Chef Lydia Liebchen recalls helping a customer who was curious about grass-fed beef. Liebchen talked about the Debragga farms upstate, pointed out that grass-fed beef is lower in calories, has a good hit of beta-carotene, omega 3s, and vitamins A&E. “At the end of all this, he asked, ‘But the taste – is it like licking the blade of a lawn mower?’” Liebchen recalls.

No (if you need to be told), but now you can get restaurant-quality burgers closer to your patch of green. May is National Burger Month, and in celebration, DeBragga’s has put together kits to help backyard chefs recreate some of the best burgers in New York. Weekly selections highlight the burgers from Colicchio & Sons, Harlem’s Jazz, Tao and Cookshop, packaged with brioche buns from Brooklyn’s Brick City Baking and hand-selected cheese slices from the experts at Murray’s Cheese in New York.

To make sure home cooks have a successful burger bash, DeBragga even offers a hotline, staffed by Liebchen. Most of the questions revolve around how long to cook the burger, and if the meat can be frozen (with ground beef, there is no degradation from refreezing).

Call the hotline if you need additional handholding, but here, rapid fire from George Faison, a Debragga co-owner, are some tips for success for a backyard grill feast.

  • Make the burgers small – six ounces is the perfect size, Faison says. “It's not [so] thick that anything you top it with slides off. It's the perfect bun-sized burger, but it's also thick enough that no matter what, you get the great taste of beef with every bite." Larger or smaller burgers tend to cook unevenly.
  • Keep the lid open. “If you kept the lid closed at all, you would accelerate cooking, and not in a good way,” Faison says.
  • Get the grill very hot and cook fast. For medium rare: place burgers on hot grill and cook for approximately three minutes without moving. “When you begin to see the juices bubbling up on top of the pattie and ponding (it appears red), dig under the burger aggressively with a metal spatula and flip it over,” Faison says. “Cook the burger about one minute more, transfer to a platter to rest a few moments. Then put it on a bun, and eat!”

    Burger kits, including 12 six-ounce patties, cheese and buns, are available for $75 throughout the month of May at debragga.com.
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