There’s nothing better than enjoying a juicy burger with the right toppings. However, there are different ways to cook and prepare a burger, with lots of different things to personalize your food and make it perfect for you.
Your piece of meat needs to be cooked just right at a safe temperature for you to enjoy it properly.
Measuring your burger doneness and the internal temperature of your burger patties can be of huge importance and ensures that cooking burgers are safe and enjoyable at the same time.
Follow our guide to find out how to measure the doneness of your burgers and how much you should cook your food before eating it.
What’s The Best Way To Cook A Burger?
There are many different methods to cook a burger to achieve the best possible result. Here we have listed some popular methods along with the pros and cons of each one of them.
Grilling Your Burger
The most common way to cook a burger is to grill it on a hot plate or barbecue grill. This method is fast, easy, and convenient but it does not give you as much control over the process as other methods.
It will take about 10-20 minutes to cook a burger, depending on the appliance that you’re using and the amount of direct heat being used.
It also has the potential to dry out your burger if you let it go too long as the moisture evaporates from the surface of the patty.
Smoking Your Burger
Smoking your burger gives you more control over the cooking process. You can choose exactly what type of smoke flavor you want your burger to have.
If you’re smoking your burger indoors, this method requires a lot of equipment like a smoker box and a chimney.
On top of that, it takes up to an hour to finish the process with preparation included. However, many people will smoke their food outdoors to avoid smoke accumulating indoors.
What Are The Benefits Of Grilling Burgers?
If you decide to use a grill for cooking your burgers, here are some benefits of doing so:
You Can Grill Multiple Burgers At Once!
One of the best things about using a grill is that you can facilitate multiple people at once when cooking and can keep everything cooking at similar timings.
This means everyone will be enjoying their grub at the same time, rather than waiting around for different patties to finish at different times.
You Can grill Your Toppings While Cooking Your Burger
Everyone loves their different toppings to accompany their burger. Features like bacon, cheese, and vegetables are useful to cook at the same time, and with the right amount of space on your grill, you can do just that.
It’s Easier To Clean And Maintain
Because of all the juices and the sauces involved with cooking burgers, there’s a lot of cleaning to do afterward.
However, with grills, you need to wait for the grill to cool down, and then you can wipe off the excess grease and fats that may be left behind.
What Level Do I Cook My Burger?
Many people assume that burgers have to be cooked at a well-done level, however, this isn’t always the case. Tender burgers will tend to be rare or medium-rare, which is always a great way for people to enjoy their meat.
If you prefer your burger at a tender, but firm level then medium burgers aren’t infrequent and are enjoyed by burger lovers everywhere.
You can alter the level of doneness on your patties by cooking them over the heat source for a longer period of time.
Ensuring that you cook the raw meat with enough cooking time to ensure that your food is safe is important.
Avoiding foodborne illness and keeping yourself healthy is vital to enjoying any good burger, with lots of people opting for a medium-well burger to avoid potential illnesses.
How To Measure My Meat Temperatures
When measuring the temperature of your meat, make sure that you’re using accurate tools. Some people recommend using a thermometer because they believe that it provides a better reading.
However, some thermometers can vary due to how they were calibrated. Other people opt for a digital probe thermometer instead, as these types of probes provide an instant readout without having to remove the probe from the meat.
Either way, if you’re interested in ensuring that you get the correct temperatures, it’s best to invest in one of these tools before attempting to measure the temperature of your meat.
Placing one of these tools into your burger meat is a great way of ensuring that your ground beef or beef patty is thoroughly cooked and free from causes of foodborne illnesses.
The bigger the burger, the longer it can take to grill. However, you may feel more comfortable cooking your meats at a higher temperature with more frequent flips of the meat.
What Foodborne Illnesses Can Be Found In Uncooked Beef?
Uncooked beef has been known to contain bacteria such as E. coli, Listeria monocytogenes, Campylobacter jejuni, Salmonella enterica, Staphylococcus aureus, and Clostridium perfringens.
These bacteria can cause serious health problems including diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, fever, headaches, and bloody stools.
If you’re concerned about what unseasoned beef might mean for you and others, consider purchasing steaks from reputable butcher shops and restaurants that serve high-quality raw beef products.
With proper meat comes more assurances with the food that you’ll be enjoying.
Should I Wash My Meat Before Cooking?
Theoretically, you won’t need to wash your beef as long as you’ve bought your food from a respectable food source.
However, there are still many reasons why you should wash your beef before consuming it. One reason is to keep your meat hygienic. Another reason is to help prevent cross-contamination between different types of foods.
Washing your meat ensures that all traces of dirt and grease are removed. This helps to ensure that you’re not ingesting harmful bacteria through eating contaminated beef.
Washing also helps to protect your meat from being contaminated during preparation.
You can use either hot water or cold water when washing your beef. Hot water is recommended to kill bacteria and remove excess fat and grime.
Grilling your meat will eradicate a lot of different bacteria forms, however, you can never be too safe.
Will Washing My Beef Affect The Flavor?
Although washing your meat removes most of the bacterial growth on its surface, it does not affect the flavor of your beef.
If you prefer your meat to have a strong taste, then you shouldn’t worry about washing your steak before grilling it. Just make sure that you don’t wash the beef for too long or you risk ruining the texture of the patties.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, cooking burgers can take anywhere from a couple of minutes to around 15 minutes, depending on the amount of heat and the way you’re cooking the burgers.
With regard to getting the level of doneness that you like, it can’t hurt to use a meat thermometer to make sure everything is in order, with different people enjoying different levels of cooking.
You can always remove the patty from the grill and cut it into the meat to check the color of the burger inside.
It should be gray to gray-pink, which will ensure that the burger has at least medium-rare levels of doneness. At the end of the day, you need to make sure that you’re staying safe whilst enjoying your food!
