Top or Bottom?

[RRM19]

Top or bottom?

How do you prefer it?

Mary and I recently started grinding our own beef, using a 65/35 mix. It's absolutely delicious, perfect for cheeseburgers, meatballs, meat loaf, stuffed bell peppers, and anything else calling for ground beef. For the beef we use chuck steaks and chuck roasts. For the fat, we simply ask at the meat counter if we can "buy" beef fat from them. I say "buy", because each time we've asked, they've given us their beef fat trimmings for free.

So anyway, having such a delicious blend of ground beef now, it made me start thinking about how a burger should be constructed.

Assuming you use lettuce and tomato, do you put the lettuce and tomato on the bottom, then the beef patty atop, or start with the beef patty, putting the lettuce and tomato on top of the melted cheese?

I was always a bottom guy, Mary a top. Recently I tried putting lettuce and tomato on top of the patty, and found the burger tasted so much better.

So I'm curious. What are the rest of you? Bottom or top? It's such a simple issue, but I'll bet there are strong opinions as to which is best.

For the record, I toast a cut-open poppy seed Kaiser roll in butter. Spread Gray Poupon mustard across the bottom slice. Lovingly lower the burger atop, melted cheese on its surface. Add four dill pickle chips across the cheese. Top with a leaf of green leaf lettuce, thin slice of red onion, three circles of tomato. Salt and pepper the tomato slices. Slather mayonnaise on the cut half of the top half of the Kaiser roll. Clap on the lid. Eat.

[mucho gordo]

Have you tried making a pot of chili using the chuck roast? I have the butcher cut one into small pieces for me. Makes a great chili.

[RRM19]

Thanks for replying. As a matter of fact, we do use the chuck for chili as well, although pretty much exclusively for our beef enchiladas, rather than a traditional "bowl of red."

When we first started grinding, we tried different blends (combining chuck, sirloin, short ribs and I think brisket), using an 80/20 mix, but once we increased the mix to 65/35, we found the chuck was great on its own. One thing we do want to try at some point is grinding some rib eyes, adding fat to get to 65/35, for cheeseburgers. How anyone else experimented with this?

[browndogs2]

Top.

[MGZ]

Like you, I'm a fan of a pretty fatty patty.* Moreover, my view is that cooking a burger past 125 degrees is a shame. Consequently, I'm inclined to place a leaf or two of lettuce on the, unadorned, bottom half of the roll. Thus, it forms a shield protecting against the oversaturation and disintegration that a super juicy burger can produce. Tomato and onion, on the other hand belong on top over the cheese.

*I've had similar experiences when I try to "buy" beef or pork fat.

[Harters]

Mustard first on the bottom bread, then lettuce (I rarely eat tomato unless it's cooked as I find it pretty tasteless). Then burger. Topped with onion. More mustard on the top bread. Eat.