Need advice for high volume burger cook

Awesome now you get to put it all to actual work.

 

Learned a few things today. The cook went pretty well.

There were two further steps I could have done yesterday that would have made the cook go faster. What I could have done as I was portioning the hambuger was open each portion, put a pinch of salt in the middle and then shape the portion in a disc shape ready to be pressed. The salting and handling steps between the onsite cooler and the patty press cost us a fair bit of time, but we got 128 patties out in 73 minutes, 1.75 patties per minute. I think we pushed out 12 that were undercooked.

I haven't tried salting the patties 24 hours before the cook, so I will have to try that with a small batch (small batches?) to see if the salt amount needs to go up or down.

Another issue with the big cook that was not experienced in the test cooks was the press rams got sticky as a little bit of beef fat stuck to the ram face everytime the press was used. We had to wing it on that one, but McGyvered our way through on the fly.

The only picture I got today was the cookers lined up with all three chimneys lit. After that I had people wanting to talk to me until the cookers were hot. The highlight for me was after the cook. The preacher had all the K-6 kids gathered around and as he was about to pray with them he asked what they needed God's help with in the coming school year. One little guy, probably about eight years old stuck his hand up in the air and screamed "Math!"

 

Glad it went well. One thing to remember with salt is it will tend to pull water out so your patties could come out drier. You can always press line them up then put salt and pepper on a bunch at one time just as they are about to go on.

As for the press a little cooking spray may fix your problem.

 

I don’t close the lid when I do burgers because the ambient temp cooks the top more than I like before getting a good sear over direct heat. The open air keeps your coals much hotter (though you burn through more charcoal) and temps don’t spike from constantly opening/closing the lid. I’m also only using 2 oz. patties smashed with the tongs-on-spatula-on-wax-paper method prior to the cook. If I do them in the cast iron, I smash while cooking.

Salting too early does release extra moisture, so go with 70/30 blend if you decide to go that route. You will also see more shrinkage during the cook and I typically add a half inch to the diameter of the patty in comparison to the bun. For charcoal burgers, I mix the ground beef with a little Worcestershire and black pepper ahead of time, then apply salt to the party as the chimney is doing its thing.

 

Thanks you guys, keep the ideas coming. I am off hamburgers for a while, I think the wife and I ate 8-10 pounds of sample cooks this summer. When I am ready to try again I will stop by to see what else comes along.