This Garlic Addition Makes Your Burgers Taste Like A Steakhouse's

Whether from your favorite fast food chain or grilled yourself for a backyard barbecue, burgers of all kinds can be a joy, but there's a distinctive pleasure to be found in a classy steakhouse burger. This is no coincidence – while burgers differ from steaks, that doesn't mean inspiration can't be taken from classic steak preparations to elevate your burger patties. One way to upgrade your dish is to slather the bun with the classic steakhouse accompaniment of garlic confit.

Confit is a method of slow cooking and then preserving food in some form of fat with deep historical roots in French cuisine. In taste and texture, it is similar to roasted garlic (though confit is easier to make) — more subtle than raw garlic, yet intensely savory, with a creamy consistency that makes it perfect for spreading on bread like butter.

Making garlic confit isn't complicated, and can involve no more than two ingredients — the garlic itself, plus a medium of some kind of oil or fat. After peeling and trimming a few heads of garlic broken down into individual cloves, place them in a pot and cover with your preferred oil or fat. Bring to a slight simmer over a medium heat, then reduce to such a low heat that any bubbling is barely perceptible. The time frame varies, but once the garlic is tender and tan in color, your confit is ready. It can be used immediately or refrigerated in a sealed container while still immersed in the chilled fat or oil for 1 to 2 weeks. To use garlic confit on a burger, take a few of the cloves and gently mash them onto the bottom slice of your burger bun, leaving the upper slice for any other condiments you want to add.

When deciding what kind of fat or oil to use, think about the flavors you want the garlic to be imbued with. High-quality extra virgin olive oil goes well with garlic in this or almost any context, but to achieve maximal decadence, we would be remiss if we did not recommend approaching garlic in the same way as the French do with duck confit, utilizing the luxurious, inimitable richness of duck fat.

As garlic confit is more mellow and less assertive than raw or roasted garlic, which means that while you can be more generous when smearing it onto your bun, you should also be careful about what else you include in the burger, as other strong flavors risk overpowering the confit. Take cheese, for example — while a wonderfully stinky blue cheese can be divine on a burger, it may render the more delicate garlic confit harder to appreciate, so you should maybe opt for something milder yet still flavorful, like a good Gouda.

The same applies to condiments — we at Tasting Table love a good mustard, but you might want to go for a modest application of Dijon mustard or one of the softer Creole mustards, rather than any of the fiery English varieties that'll make steam come out of your ears. By the same token, sweet caramelized red onions would provide both a complement and a pleasing contrast to the garlic confit, while the kind of spicy pickled chili peppers you'd get at In-N-Out would not achieve a similar balance. Meanwhile, if you are in the mood for some spicier flavors, you can consult our recipe for Cajun baked steak fries, which would make an appropriate side for any steakhouse-style, garlic confit-suffused burger.