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Anyone can slap a patty of meat onto a grill, but truly great burgers require something more. Learn the secrets that will transform your burgers into culinary masterpieces, including:

Details on the best types and cuts of meat for making burgers
Restaurant-tested techniques for cooking burgers perfectly
Recipes for beef, chicken, turkey, lamb, pork, fish, and veggie burgers

How to Choose Meat for Burgers

In the past, burgers were almost always made with beef. But nowadays, many other kinds of meat—including chicken, turkey, lamb, pork, fish, and shellfish—are used to make burgers. The key to making any of these types of burgers is to buy the right kind of meat.

Beef to Use for Making Burgers

Ground beef can be made from many different cuts of beef. The cut of beef from which the ground beef is made influences the flavor, texture, and moistness of your burgers. The muscles that cows regularly use contain a lot of connective tissue, which provides flavor but can make meat tough and hard to chew. Inactive muscles yield tender meat that often lacks a distinctive beefy flavor. Lean cuts are low in fat but, particularly when ground, tend to dry out and even fall apart when cooked. When making hamburgers, the goal is to find ground beef that strikes a balance between taste, texture, fat content, and juiciness.

Ground Chuck

The easiest, and most common, way to get good ground beef for burgers is to use ground chuck. Chuck comes from a cow’s neck and shoulder and has a balance of beefy flavor, tenderness, and fat content that yields a consistently tasty burger. Preground chuck is sold with varying amounts of fat. Ground chuck marked 20% fat or 80% lean is ideal for hamburgers: it contains just enough fat to keep burgers juicy and moist without leaving excessive fat in the pan during cooking.

Blends of Ground Meat

Rather than rely on chuck alone, many restaurants use combinations of chuck, sirloin (for tenderness), and brisket or short rib (for deep beefy flavor) to make more distinctive hamburgers. They then keep their blends as closely guarded trade secrets.

Ground chuck is great for most home cooks, but consider experimenting with different blends of beef if you’re an adventurous burger enthusiast. Since some of these cuts of beef are not often sold ground, you may have to grind it yourself or ask your butcher to grind it for you.

Ground Beef to Avoid for Burgers

Despite its name, avoid buying ground beef labeled “ground hamburger” for making burgers. It usually consists of leftover trimmings from various cuts, and it’s difficult to know its fat content.

Chicken and Turkey

Both chicken and turkey are leaner than beef, so many people choose these meats for making burgers. That said, the lower fat content in chicken and turkey make these meats more likely to dry out when cooked.

To help prevent chicken or turkey burgers from drying out, it’s best to make your burgers using ground dark meat, as opposed to white meat. Though many people prefer the texture of white meat to dark meat when eating whole chicken or turkey, the higher fat content of dark meat is necessary for molding burger patties and results in a juicier, more tender burger.

Try to find preground chicken or turkey that contains a combination of white and dark meat, or you can grind your own combination. The higher proportion of dark meat you use, the closer in flavor and texture your chicken or turkey burger will be to a beef burger.

Seasoning Ground Chicken and Turkey for Burgers

Because of their lower fat content, ground chicken and turkey can yield bland burgers if they’re not strongly seasoned with salt, pepper, herbs, and spices. Liquid flavorings such as Worcestershire sauce and Dijon mustard have the benefit of contributing both flavor and moisture. For seasoning ideas for chicken and turkey for burgers, see Chicken Burger Recipes and Turkey Burger Recipes.

Lamb

For those who like slightly stronger-flavored meat, lamb is a great alternative to beef in burger recipes. Common in Greek and Middle Eastern cuisines, lamb excels in richly spiced preparations but also works well with milder Italian spices such as oregano and rosemary.

Cuts of Lamb for Burgers

As with beef, lamb shoulder meat offers a good balance of fat, flavor, and tenderness for burger preparations. In addition, lamb shoulder is less expensive than other cuts of lamb, such as the loin, leg, and shank. However, some people find the flavor of lamb shoulder a little too strong for their taste. If this is the case for you, try mixing ground lamb shoulder with ground meat from the sweeter, milder loin.

Preground lamb can be difficult to locate in some areas, so you may have to request it in advance from a butcher.

Pork

The flavor and fat content of pork is determined not only by the cut but also by the breed and diet of the pig it comes from. When Americans began demanding low-fat meat options during the 1990s, the pork industry responded by raising pigs on a leaner diet and began marketing pork as “the other white meat.” The resulting meat was leaner, but it also lacked flavor. Today, smaller farms are raising pigs bred to yield stronger-flavored pork with a higher fat content. This type of pork is far superior when it comes to making burgers. When making pork burgers, it pays to look for pork from small—most likely local—farms.

Fat Content of Ground Pork for Burgers

When making pork burgers, seek out ground pork with about 20% fat (also frequently labeled as 80% lean). Avoid using ground pork labeled “lean,” as it contains less than 17% fat.

Other Ways of Getting Great Ground Pork for Burgers

There are two other ways to get great ground pork for making pork burgers:

Ask a butcher to grind you pork shoulder meat with pork fatback in a 5:1 ratio.
Mix together lean ground pork with the filling of your favorite pork sausage in a 1:1 ratio.

Fish and Shellfish

The delicate flesh of fish and shellfish doesn’t tolerate the same grinding process used for other meats and instead is usually hand-chopped or left intact in burger and sandwich recipes. When making fish burgers, follow these guidelines:

Fattier fishes such as salmon and tuna take well to chopped preparations, whereas flaky varieties such as trout, cod, and tilapia are frequently served in fillet form on sandwiches.
Some fish burger recipes call for chopping fish finely before molding the patties, while others instruct you to leave the fish in larger chunks to help retain more of its moisture. With both methods, chill your chopped fish mixture in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes before forming patties.
Cook fish burgers within a few hours after chopping, mixing, and chilling. Chopped fish rapidly deteriorates in quality and can become contaminated easily.
Always seek out the freshest fish you can and cook and serve it the same day you purchase it.

Vegetarian Burger Options

Dozens of vegetarian burger variations exist. Some options attempt to mimic the experience of eating a beef burger, while others take advantage of the sandwich’s convenience as finger food and feature anything from mixed vegetables and tofu to whole mushrooms and whole grains.

Because these foods lack the fat found in meats, most vegetarian burgers require the addition of binders to keep patties from falling apart during cooking. Common binders include combinations of eggs yolks, egg whites, breadcrumbs, and olive oil. The lack of fat also causes vegetarian burgers to stick to cooking surfaces, so always lubricate grill grates or sauté pans with nonstick cooking spray or brush them with the oil of your choice.

Marination

Burgers made from whole pieces of tofu or mushrooms benefit from marination for additional flavor in a mixture of acid (vinegar, wine, or citrus juice), oil, and seasonings for about an hour prior to cooking.

Acknowledgments & Disclaimer

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Other Burger Ingredients

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