Why Fresh Ingredients Transform Your Meals

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

Prepare smashburgers at on a preheated frying pan or steel. You want to hear that sizzle the second the beef hits the steel.

Flip, include cheese, and cook for another to melt the cheese and finish cooking. That's what makes it so excellent. The 20% fat material is essential for producing a juicy hamburger and crispy edges.

Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

Leaner beef will lead to a drier, less tasty hamburger. Stick with 80/20. Crispy edges originate from three things: (500-550F) Get your frying pan ripping hot. The fat renders and french fries the edges. Maximize contact with the frying pan. Heat, fat, and surface area contact. Master those three things and you'll get perfect crispy edges whenever.

The technique needs direct, high heat from a frying pan to create the signature crust. You can bake burgers in the oven, but they will not be smashburgers. They'll just be ... baked burgers. is the timeless choice it melts completely and has a creamy texture. Cheddar, Swiss, and provolone are likewise great if you wish to mix it up.

Flavorful Dinner Inspiration for Grilling in 2026

This maximizes surface location for browning and develops the signature crispy edges. Don't be shy. Really smash it. That's where the magic occurs. Season on the griddle. Don't season the beef before forming the balls it can make the texture mushy. Definitely. I use mine for pancakes, bacon, eggs, grilled cheese, quesadillas, seared steaks, and more.

Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

As soon as you comprehend how steel holds and moves heat, you start using it for whatever. I did Andris Lagsdin. I created the Baking Steel in 2012 after reading that steel performs heat much better than stone. My household has run Stoughton Steel Business in Hanover, MA because the 1960s, so I got a piece from my father's store, evaluated it, and the rest is history.

Every Baking Steel is still made at our household store. Cast iron is fine. But if you're severe about smashburgers, steel is much better. It shops more heat, recovers much faster, and offers you a consistent crust from the very first hamburger to the last. Get it ripping hot, work quick, and make some bad ass burgers.

What started as a Kickstarter task (boosted by an early recommendation from Kenji Lpez-Alt on Serious Eats) has grown into the go-to tool for hundreds of thousands of 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 developed the Skinny Griddle and Mini Frying pan specifically for stovetop cooking engineered to hold heat the way just steel can.

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

Achieving Restaurant-Quality Sides at Home

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

These flat, smooth cooking surfaces can take a lot of heat, and they can offer your hamburger the best sear, and a well rounded, even cook. We like frying pans since they are so flexible, and while generally they are utilized on stovetops, we routinely cook hamburgers on a griddle in the oven, or perhaps over an open campfire.

If you're using your frying pan on the stovetop, in the oven, or on the campfire, there are a few universal guidelines to follow when you're cooking hamburgers: If you have cast iron frying pans, they are going to require a layer of flavoring to protect the surface area. This makes it non-stick, and likewise safeguards it from rust.