Need advice for high volume burger cook

I am the crew chief for the BBQ team at my church. My first act when I got the job was to take 'burgers' off the menu. The church was buying frozen patties by the box (the ones made out of heart meat and lymph nodes), and cooking those on gas. Ugg. I think I last served those in 2016.

I need to put 'burgers' back on the menu for either August 2020 or May 2021. The congregation hits brisket like a plague of locusts and scythes through spare ribs, but I am getting enough requests for burgers to have to figure it out.

My crewmembers are all teenagers with parental permission to be cooking over live coals. The team has 4 Weber kettles and 4 UDSs.

I have cooked 8-10 pounds of burgers this spring, 1 pound at a time. I can put a patty just under 1/2 inch thick on blazing hot coals, close the lid for three minutes, open flip close, three minutes, then open and pull out fully cooked still juicy burgers. I have been using 85% lean.

If the patties are a touch over half an inch thick I am finding pink middles. For myself, and guests in my home who ask for medium rare burgers I am willing to serve them, I prefer medium rare; but for unknown guests at a public event they have to be well done for food safety, but still juicy because BBQ.

Ideally one or two team members on one or two kettles need to be able to push out 40 freshly cooked burgers in 20 minutes, 80 freshly cooked patties in 45 minutes. With twelve patties at a time and a seven minute cook this is doable.

I _think_ I need to start looking at patty presses so the burger patties will be uniform. I can confirm overhandling ground beef leads to toughness at the chew, though I have never used a press before.

I welcome alternatives before I order up a press. I do have a Costco but no Sam's Club.

Thanks in advance

 

How many people will you be feeding?
If I’m going to a burger cook I pre-make all the patty’s using a sheet of wax paper in between 4 high.

 

Id make smash burgers roll into a ball the size you want, smash down and separate with wax paper either in flat baking dish or some thing like that.

 

Don’t need a burger press. You can do the same thing with a can from like baked beans. I’ve used a dowel cut the lids off the van drilled hole in lid attach dowel with screw. Then weigh out balls of ground beef drop them in and press with dowel/lid. They will come out the same size place between sheets of wax paper.

If you have like a big black stone flat top griddle you can cook 20 or so at a time with no issue. You don’t want too high of a heat if you’re going for medium well to well as the outside will burn before the inside cooks.

Key is get a GOOD spatula made for work like this.

 

Thanks for the advice so far. Typically for just the church we plan for 80-100, cook for 120-150 and have minimal leftovers. We served 480 plates for a neighborhood outreach event Aug 2019, had to rent a pig cooker to go with the gear we own for that one.

I like the idea of a can lid with dowel and weighed portions. I can do all the weighing. When I was a teenager I wasn't super consistent myself. Weigh the portions myself and have a simple consistent system teenagers can use dependably to make patties sounds like a win/win. That way they are involved more deeply in the process but should still push out good consistent product.

Once I am pumping out consisent patties I'll revist how to get them cooked. The teenagers are very interested in building consistent fires and they are getting consistent positive feedback from folks eating their food

 

That method is cheap and worked for me many times.

 

I made a press out of a 28 ounce tomato can with a scrap of 2x4 and a pair of 1 5/8 drywall screws for the handle. Worked good. I cut the hamburger block by eye after salting and measured 4.1 , 4.1, 4.2 and 4.2 ounces. Split each of those in half, repacked with the salt in the middle, rough hand shaping then through the press, so far so good.

Cook time to doneness all the way throuhh was 5 minutes per side. Too much. I need to keep the cook time down around or under 7 minutes. And they were dried out. Tough chew, dried out, but good beef flavor and good crust. They were clearly cooked on charcoal, not gas or in a skillet, but I want them moist and I need them faster.

Goal is cook time under 7 minutes with tenderness, good beef flavor in every bite, moist to dripping, and taste of crust in at least half the bites.

I will next fiddle with 5 patties per pound (3.2 oz before cooking) and 6 patties per pound (2.67 oz before cooking). The guys asking for burgers are crushing the ribs and brisket, they probably won't complain about slider sized burgers.

Also, I am not wild about the red bag lump charcoal for grilling. It doesn't suck, but I think the light brown bag with the horse on the front might burn a little hotter for me. I was seeing about 400-425 dF in the cooker after the lid had been on 3+ minutes with the red bag stuff after picking the bark chunks out.

I do have 1" diameter close nipples on every team Weber kettle, like for a UDS. Every one has a hairdryer in their gear box too, we are routinely making 1200dF grate temp for searing steak with electrical assist. It is really hard on the equipment, but the crust in the meat is nice. Might try briquettes too if my favorite lump lets me down.

 

I do like salting the top of the hamburger block, then splitting each block and half and reforming with a layer of salt spread out in the middle. Pushing juice up from the bottom with heat seems to distribute the salt real well, and then flipping once and pushing the salt through the meat the other way, done.

I do like a really thin spatula blade for ground meat on the grill too, agree with whomever that was.

Thansk for all y'alls help so far. I am not there yet. If you have an idea please speak up.

 

Most supermarkets have a patty machine and if tell them it is for a church group, a lot of them will make your patties for the bulk meat price/lb. I think most places usually use a 4 oz. burger. When the patties are made they are formed and have a double layer of patty paper between each burger, making for easier seperation even if frozen. If you are going to hand press I would use a Tunafish can, Depending on how many you need to cook 80-150 you'll need between 20 and 37.5 lbs of chopped meat. You could start with 20 lbs. fresh and the rest frozen, and based on your volume you could thaw out in 5 lb. increments as day progresses.

 

For such a large group id think 1/2lb is a lot if you have other stuff going. Cutting size will save cooking time

 

Everyone here has great ideas here. If you plan on cooking for the church routinely you need to invest in a cooker that will do what you need. All the food prep can be done before the cook. My grill will hold 125 burgers. I cook a lot some of the members here know I do it quite often.

 

Whether or not you go to a Baptist church, try to get someone to put you in contact with a member of one of their Baptist Men Mobile Feeding Units folk. They absolutely know what they're doing and they might be able to help you with advice. A couple of other Methodists and I assisted in a MFU kitchen in LaMarque TX after Hurricane Ike. The friendship & teamwork they shared with us, the quality of food, and the quantity of food we put out was simply amazing. One of our guys was and had been for several years the director of the local senior center and in charge of all feeding events at our church. So he knew all about mass feeding, but he still learned a lot from the Texas Baptist Men.

 

OK, not that big a cook. I have seen of TV footage of teams like the Baptist Men's Group Rick mentioned. I hope if I have a chance to volunteer with a group like that someday I will go. I do agree Baptist's are usually quite friendly and willing to share. I was baptized Methodist but did belong to a Baptist church for a while.

For May 2020 all the team members smoked something at home on their UDSs, wrapped and cambro'd in a cooler, all we had to do onsite was unwrap, carve and serve. I did grill some bell peppers at home with olive oil and kosher salt, but they were better fresh off the grill than they were when the picnic finally happened.

What I am willing to do for the next one is have all the team smoke something at home as above, but I can drive around to all the team member's houses gathering up kettles in my truck and have all the kettles on site morning of. Then I can have some team members carving the brisket and ribs and shoulder, and some team members grilling fresh stuff in the moment. Like burgers and bell peppers. And tofu. I spend a lot of time at the picnics looking to see what ends up in the trash, I seemed to have nailed grill smoked tofu this year.

I start new team members in early summer grilling whole chickens on kettles and work up from there. My team members are doing Thanksgiving and Christmas turkeys on their kettles by the end of the first season, and usually have a few shoulders out of their UDS by then; but it really takes two seasons to get someone proficient and independent in UDS basics. But if I start from scratch with a 13-14 year old I don't have to unteach them anything and after I have two seasons invested in them they cook 2-3 more seasons before they go away to college. I especially like seeing the more experienced kids helping the newer members along without me having to do it myself.

In my free time (I got scads of that) I am working through Mallman's seven fires cookbook, I am wanting to transition the team away from charcoal onto hardwood coals because I am spending so much on charcoal. Also looking into rotisserie spits. If I have a couple of those I can get a small whole pig and a small whole lamb from Costco, spit them on opposite sides of the same fire on site and feed a lot more people without a whole lot of bother.

If I stop serving brisket by the metric ton I will be replaced immediately. But I can add burgers with the equipment we have, just have to work out the process.

 

If ya was closer I would come cook with

 

Closing in on it. I did a test cook with 3.2 ounce ( 5 per pound) patties a couple day ago, same 28oz tomato can for the press. I used 85% lean from the organic section, moderately hot direct heat, about 400dF with the kettle lid on for three minutes. Cook time to done all the way through was 7:30, so ballpark, but they were dry and a little tough. Good beef flavor, charcoal crust in at least half the bites, but not juicy and a little too slow.

I did grab a few books off my shelf. I have three of the annual cookbooks put out by Weber. I think I have 2005, 2011 and 2017. All three are authored by Jamie Purviance and his cook method is the same in all three of the volumes I have. He is using 80% lean and 3.0 ounce patties, 6-8 minutes cook time on the fire I am building.

I need to update my goals list. On one kettle I need to (average) be pushing out one hamburger patty per minute, and it needs to be sustainable. *new item* The cooked patty needs to reach all the way to the edge of the bun, full circumference. Must have good beef flavor in every bite, must not be dry or tough, and must have charcoal crust flavor in minimum 50% of the bites.

A brief word on time. As above, I have chosen to show teenagers how to do this, and it needs to be achievable. Certainly I -could- cram 48 burger patties into a single kettle and buy some time on the average output. But I am trying to show them how to do things well. And I want them to do well in life when they get to choose between doing a thing well or doing it halfway. Managing 10-12 patties at a time is enough; enough room on the grate to manage each patty without mutilating the neighbor, and enough output to scrape down the grate between cooks.

 

I would go 3.0 patty and either 70/30 or 75/25. The dry comes from lean meat the only now after you have pressed them you will need to dock the meat as the higher fat ones will shrink up a little more and the docking helps stop that. Nice work and tracking on your side.

 

I have one system dialed in. Using Jamie Purviance's method 2 posts up I am getting consistent results now. I am weighing out patties at 3.0 or 3.1 ounces. Salt and shape into a hockey puck like item, run through the basic press pictured above made from a 28 ounce tomato can.

80/20 hamburger is consistent for me, whether I get it from the co-op crunchy market organic style, or Carrs/Safeway or Kroger/Fred Meyers. I don't know how tight the spec is on 80/20 hamburger, but 80/20 hamburger cooks way more consistently than the charcoals I have tried burn.

The key for me is to know the temperature inside the Weber kettle when the lid has been on for three minutes. Ideally, the temp inside the cooker will be right at 400 dF after the lid has been on three minutes. If true, open lid, flip, cook three more minutes and done.

If the temp in the kettle is between 350 and 400 dF, leave the patties cooking for another 30 seconds, so 3:30 per side.

If the temp in the cooker is between 300 and 350 dF, let the patties cook four minutes before flipping or moving to cambro.

If the temp in the kettle is under 300dF after the lid has been on three minutes build a bigger fire or try different charcoal.

Two of these cooked patties fill a regular sized hamburger bun just fine, and will be massively impressive to kids served singly with a dinner roll as a hamburger bun.

All of the above are with the patties subjected to direct high heat, burning coals within one inch of the cooking grate. Meat is brown all the way through, juicy, taste of crust in 50% or more of mouthfuls. If you want melted cheese on there lift the lid and place your cheese slices about one minute before the cooking time is finished. I am not doing any shaping after these come out of the burger press, they are flat topped cylinders when they hit the cooker.

One outlier for me proved to be ground Waygu. I have had zero problems with flareups using product labeled 80/20. The ground wagyu I found at Kroger/Fred Meyer was not labeled for fat/lean content, but it is less than 80% lean and behaved poorly over live coals, lots of flareups.

Thanks one and all for your input.

 

This may be more work than you’re interested in but if you want quick consistent burgers you could sous vide them ahead of time then flash grill.

 

i would get a flat plate steel griddle top. heck put that over the coals on the meat-grate. than just have a plastic bin of balled up pre-weighed beef balls. put the balls on the griddle and smash them right there and then with a griddle spatula.

good on you!! i would freak out and have a panic attack if i had to cook for that many people.

 

Well that was close. 945PM last night I posted here I had it worked out. 0922AM this morning I get a call from the youth minister at the church asking if my team can do a cook for 100-120 people on 08-16-2020.

I said, "Yes, we can do that, what would you like to serve?"

She said, "Burgers. Can you make burgers?"