Recipes, guides and kitchen know-how. Mostly useful, occasionally silly.
The One Time Squashing Your Burger Is Allowed
Thin beef patties smashed onto a smoking-hot pan for crisp, lacy edges. Stacked as doubles with melted cheese and a quick burger sauce, then wrapped in foil to rest.
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- Prep10 min
- Cook15 min
- Serves4
For most of my adult life I was told not to press down on a burger.
"You'll squeeze the juices out." "You'll ruin it." "Put the spatula down, Oliver."
Then it turned out the best burgers in the world are made by pressing down on them as hard as humanly possible.
Nobody has apologised.
So I read every serious recipe I could find, cooked far too many of them, and kept the bits that worked.
So this is my smash burger recipe. Two thin patties, crisp lacy edges, melted cheese, done in a frying pan.
No barbecue. No griddle. Just a heavy pan, supermarket mince and a reasonable amount of violence.
If you came looking for a smash burger recipe UK kitchens can actually pull off on a Tuesday, you're in the right place.
What is a smash burger?
It's a ball of beef mince, dropped into a smoking hot pan and squashed flat the moment it lands.
More meat touching hot metal means more browning. More browning means more flavour.
That browning has a name, the Maillard reaction. It sounds like a French spy novel. It's actually just tasty crust.
American diners have been doing it for decades. The food writer Kenji López-Alt got home cooks doing it around 2012, and the rest of us have been smashing ever since.
The patty ends up thin, so it cooks in a couple of minutes, and the edges go crispy and lacy, like a beefy doily.
What you need
For the patties
- 500g beef mince, about 20% fat. Steak mince is fine. Not lean mince. The fat is what fries the edges crisp.
- Salt and black pepper. That's the entire smash burger seasoning. Good beef doesn't need a pep talk.
- A teaspoon of Cajun seasoning instead, if you're feeling restless.
- 8 slices American cheese, or mild cheddar. Yes, the plastic stuff. It melts better than anything with a family tree.
For the burger sauce
- 4 tbsp mayonnaise
- 2 tbsp ketchup
- 2 tbsp American mustard
- 2 banana shallots, very finely chopped
- 2 gherkins, very finely chopped, plus a splash of the brine
- A pinch of sugar and a pinch of garlic granules
To build
- 4 sesame burger buns. Not brioche. It's too sweet and too big and it bullies the burger.
- 2 more gherkins, sliced
- A few rings of raw onion or some shredded iceberg, if you must
Kit
- A heavy cast iron or stainless steel frying pan. Non-stick pans aren't made to be heated empty and smoking hot, so check yours before you try.
- A stiff metal spatula or fish slice, plus a rolling pin to lean on it. Or a burger press.
- A few squares of baking parchment
- Foil
How to make a smash burger
1. Get everything ready first
- Mix all the sauce ingredients except the brine, then add just enough brine to loosen it. Taste. Adjust. Taste again, purely for quality control.
- Split the mince into 8 balls of about 60g. Roll them loosely. Don't squeeze or knead them - overworked mince goes tough and bouncy.
- Put the balls back in the fridge until the pan's ready. Cold meat smashes better.
- Unwrap the cheese, slice the buns and the gherkins, and tear off four sheets of foil.
- Heat the oven to 100C (80C fan, gas ¼) to keep finished burgers warm.
This bit matters more than it looks.
Each patty takes about three minutes. There is no time to look for the cheese.
I know this because I once spent the whole of a burger's life searching the fridge for it.
2. Heat the pan until it smokes
- Put the pan on your highest heat for a good 5 minutes, until it's just starting to smoke. Open a window. Warn the smoke alarm.
- No oil needed with 20% fat mince. If your pan is new or a bit sticky, wipe on a few drops of sunflower oil.
- Drop in two balls, well apart. Any more and the pan cools down and the meat steams instead of browning.
3. Smash it. Once.
- Straight away, lay a square of baking parchment over a ball and press down hard with the spatula, leaning on it with the rolling pin, until it's thin and wider than your bun. Do the other one.
- Peel off the parchment and season the tops with salt and pepper.
- Now leave them alone for 1½ to 2 minutes. Don't press again - that just squeezes out the fat you want.
The smash only works in the first few seconds. Once the bottom starts to cook, the meat sets and won't spread. So smash the second it lands, and smash hard. This is not the moment for good manners.
4. Scrape, flip and add the cheese
- When the edges are dark brown and crispy, slide the spatula under with a firm scraping action so the crust comes with the patty, not stays in the pan. Flip.
- Put a slice of cheese on each straight away. Cook for about 1 minute, with a lid or an upturned bowl over the top if the cheese is being stubborn.
- Stack one patty on top of the other so you've got a double. Move it to a plate in the warm oven and do the next pair.
The patties are thin, so they cook through fast.
Still, cut into one before serving. It should be steaming hot all the way through, with no pink and juices that run clear.
That's the Food Standards Agency's advice on cooking burgers at home. Mince isn't like steak - any bacteria from the surface get mixed all the way through. Pink is for restaurants with paperwork.
5. Toast, build and wrap
- Turn the heat down a bit and toast the buns cut-side down in the beef fat left in the pan, about 30 seconds.
- Spread sauce on both cut sides. Bun base, double patty, gherkins, onion if you're having it, bun lid.
- Wrap each burger tightly in foil and leave it for 2 minutes. The bun softens, the cheese glues it all together and nothing slides out when you bite.
That last step is the one everybody skips.
Don't. It's the difference between a burger and a burger kit.
Spatula or smash burger press?
A stiff spatula and a rolling pin work. They also need two hands, a firm stance and a bit of nerve.
A smash burger press does it in one push. A heavy flat iron, a handle on top, done.
Ours is our cast iron burger press. Lay the parchment over the ball, press, lift.
It also flattens bacon and toasties, and it's heavy enough to double as a doorstop. I'm biased. I'm also right.
Hand wash it, dry it, and keep it away from the dishwasher.
If it goes wrong
Grey and steamed, no crust? The pan wasn't hot enough, or there were too many patties in it.
Fix: highest heat, wait for the first wisp of smoke, two at a time.
Meat stuck to the spatula? Raw mince loves bare metal. It's a whole thing.
Fix: a square of baking parchment between the meat and the spatula or press, every time.
Crust left behind in the pan? You flipped too early, or slid the spatula instead of scraping.
Fix: wait until the edges are dark and it starts to release, then scrape firmly under the whole patty.
Dry and tough? Lean mince, overworked balls, or you kept pressing.
Fix: 20% fat, roll the balls loosely, smash once and let go.
Smoke alarm going off? That's sort of the point. Sort of.
Fix: extractor on full and a window open before the pan goes on, not after.
Serve them the second they come out of the foil.
Chips if you've planned ahead. Crisps if you haven't. Nobody's judging. The pizza slice is, a bit.
