Burger & Slider Recipes

A burger is four decisions, and the meat is only one of them. Heat matters more than grind, salt belongs on the outside and nowhere else, and the patty should be handled roughly as much as a pane of glass. Get those right and a plain beef patty on a toasted bun beats anything you can build out of expensive ingredients and bad technique. Get them wrong and no topping saves it. Everything on this page runs on the same short list: a surface hot enough to build real crust, a patty left alone long enough to develop it, and a bun that can carry the load without dissolving halfway through.

Smash and classic

The everyday burger, cooked hot enough that the crust tastes like more than beef.

Grilled Burgers with Kinder's Buttery Burger Blend

Grilled Burgers with Kinder’s Buttery Burger Blend

The house burger. Seasoned on the outside only, straight over direct heat, no filler in the mix. The blend carries enough salt that nothing else is needed before it hits the fire.

Buttery Steakhouse Burgers with Brown Sugar Bacon

Buttery Steakhouse Burgers with Brown Sugar Bacon

Steakhouse seasoning on the patty and brown sugar on the bacon, so the sweet and the savory arrive from different directions. Cook the bacon first and build the burger in the fat it leaves behind.

Caramelized Onion Burger

Caramelized Onion Burger

Onions cooked all the way down to jam, which takes considerably longer than most people plan for. Start them a good forty minutes before you expect to eat, and do not rush them with high heat.

Sliders for a crowd

Same technique, different math. This is how you feed a room without standing at the grill all night.

Honey Hot Smashed Sliders

Honey Hot Smashed Sliders

Smashed thin on a hot surface so every one gets edge-to-edge crust, then hit with honey heat while the cheese is still going. Work in batches and hold them covered rather than trying to cook them all at once.

Au Jus French Dip Sliders

Au Jus French Dip Sliders

Built in a tray, baked as one slab, pulled apart at the table. The jus is for dipping and not for pouring over the top, because a soaked bottom bun stops being bread.

Kinder's BBQ Sloppy Joe Sliders

Kinder’s BBQ Sloppy Joe Sliders

Loose meat instead of a formed patty, which puts all the structural load on the bun. Toast the cut sides properly first; it is the only thing standing between you and a plate of wet bread.

Beyond beef

Salmon, turkey and chicken all make a real burger. Each one just needs different handling.

Sweet and Spicy Teriyaki Salmon Burgers

Sweet and Spicy Teriyaki Salmon Burgers

Chop the salmon by hand rather than grinding it, so the patty keeps some texture to hold onto. Keep the mix cold right up until it hits the pan or it will not stay together.

Grilled Teriyaki Pineapple Turkey Burgers

Grilled Teriyaki Pineapple Turkey Burgers

Turkey has almost no fat to protect it, so the grill runs cooler than it would for beef and the pineapple does most of the moisture work. Pull it the moment it hits temperature.

Grilled Chicken Sliders

Grilled Chicken Sliders

Thighs rather than breast, pounded to an even thickness so the whole thing cooks in a single pass. Bold marinade, short cook, no second guessing.

The Rules of the Patty

Sliders sit in their own lane here because feeding a room is a different problem from cooking two burgers well. A slider tray goes in as one piece and comes out as twelve, which changes the timing, the cheese, and how much liquid the bread can survive. The beef-free versions get their own section for the same reason: salmon, turkey and chicken all make a genuinely good burger, but each one fails differently, and mostly around fat and binding. Treat them as their own dish rather than a swap and they hold up.

Every burger and slider on FlavorMade

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best ground beef for burgers?

80/20 chuck, and the fat is not a matter of preference. It is what keeps the interior juicy while the exterior builds crust, and leaner grinds dry out well before that crust develops. If 85/15 is what you can get, cook it a shade less and be more careful about pulling it early. Grinding your own chuck is a genuine improvement, but a good 80/20 from the counter gets you most of the way there.

Should I press burgers down on the grill?

Once, hard, in the first thirty seconds, and only if you are smashing. That first press is what forces the meat into contact with the hot surface and builds the crust the whole style depends on. Every press after that squeezes out fat you already paid for. For a thick grilled burger, do not press at all.

How do I stop burgers puffing up in the middle?

Put a shallow dimple in the raw patty with your thumb, about an inch across, right in the center. As the proteins tighten the edges pull inward and the middle rises to compensate, which is what gives you a dome. The dimple gives that movement somewhere to go, and the patty comes off the heat flat.

When should I salt a burger?

On the outside, right before it meets the heat. Salt worked into ground beef starts dissolving the proteins and the patty turns springy and dense, much closer to sausage than to burger. Season both faces of the formed patty and leave the interior completely alone.

More from FlavorMade