Give Homemade Burger Patties A Tasty Kick With This Tip From Ina Garten

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Ina Garten tests her recipes up to 25 times before anyone ever hears about them. So, when she shares a food tip, it's a good idea to listen — and when it comes giving homemade burger patties a tasty kick, Garten says the trick is to add ground mustard to the seasoning. In a Youtube video shared by Food Network, Garten made caramelized onion smash burgers with gruyere cheese. While the onions were on the grill, she mixed her burger seasoning together, stating "The first thing is mustard, and I use dry mustard because it has a real sharpness about it." 

Ina then goes on to mix 1 ½ of Colman's Dry Mustard Powder with one and a half teaspoons of salt, and half a teaspoon of pepper, before sprinkling the mixture over her ground beef. She goes on to use what she considers to be the method for perfect burgers: an 80:20 mix for your ground beef. According to Garten, the increased fat content ensures the hamburgers don't come out dry. From there, she simply mixes the dry seasonings in with her hands, then rolls the ground beef mixture into balls, which are then flattened into one-inch-thick patties.

There are unlimited ways to make a homemade burger, so it stands to reason that Ina Garten has a few more tips and tricks to share to elevate the burger patties. While the caramelized onion smash burgers she makes in the Youtube video only contain meat and seasonings, she sometimes adds other ingredients. For example, Garten adds egg yolks to her homemade blue cheese burgers and, while her 80:20 ground beef rule ensures a moist texture, the Food Network star will sometimes add a little bit of olive oil to the beef. That way, you can add some fat to the mixture and ensure that everything turns out moist and delicious.

When it comes to making the juiciest and most delicious burgers, Garten knows a little something — and those aren't the only tricks she has up her sleeve. In order to get a burger patty that's perfectly seared and crispy on the outside, yet rare on the inside, she places her burger patties in the freezer for 15 minutes before throwing them on a hot cast-iron skillet. Then, with one and a half tablespoons of canola oil on the skillet, she smashes them down with a metal spatula to thin them out. This further helps to create a crust on each side of the patty, while leaving the center perfectly rare and juicy.