I know my way around a good burger. Aside from being in the kitchen at my restaurant, Mae, I am also the culinary director for BuJo burger joint, located in Sandymount and also Terenure. Two years pre-opening in Sandymount, I was approached by the owner of BuJo, who asked me if I would be interested in creating a menu for a new burger place that he was opening.
My immediate reaction, as a 20-something-year-old sous chef was to laugh and say that I wouldn’t be coming up with a burger menu. But what got my interest was the proposed journey and how I would be able to hand-pick suppliers, farmers, ingredients, cooking equipment and ultimately create my perfect burger.
I got straight to work, and within a couple of weeks I was meeting the farmers, selecting the cattle for my trials, searching for the best ice creams and working with food scientists to make the dream come to life. It wasn’t an easy task. It might sound great to be eating burgers all week to try different beef blends, and toppings and cheese and buns and pickles, but it was challenging to find the perfect ratio of everything and to blend it all together.
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I spent a few months just researching potatoes, dry matter content, frying oils and different potato storage methods. It took well over a year to strike a perfect balance for the beef recipe which is 100 per cent grass fed Irish beef from Bord Bia assured farms, cooked to order over flames. I travelled to New York, San Francisco and London to try some of the best burger places and report on my findings.
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Like I said, I know burgers. I’m also a dab hand at grilling, having cooked with one for years, and for more than three years specialised in beef and fish cooked over fire.
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These are my top recipes for three different burgers, all cooked on the grill. The key to the beef burger is getting a really good fresh blend from your butcher and ensuring that it has a good fat content (you want to have about 20 per cent fat, or VL as they call it in the butcher shops, which stands for visible lean).
These recipes are different from my BuJo recipes, but they work out great and are easy and quick to make at home.
The pickle recipe is something you could make a large batch of and store them ambient in airtight containers. The key to them is getting small cucumbers and salting them beforehand.
For the chicken, thigh meat will work just as well as breast and this glaze can be used for any main protein that you will be grilling.
The fish is more of a fish cake than a burger, giving a healthier alternative to a deep fried fish burger. The wild garlic can be substituted with basil if you can’t get hold of any.
Recipe: Beef burger with dill sauce, pickles and cheese
Recipe: Gochujang glazed grilled chicken burger with tarragon aioli and sweet pickled red onions
Recipe: Fish burger with grilled Baby Gem lettuce, tartar sauce and wild garlic pesto
