“Pressing down with the spatula counteracts the tendency of the burger to lift off the grill due to the steam escaping from the bottom,” Dr. Myhrvold said. “When you press it against a very hot surface, you maximize the Maillard reaction. The great challenge in a burger is to create the Maillard flavors on the outside while keeping the inside fairly pink. Gray meat is tasteless and tough because you’ve broken down the proteins without breaking down the collagen.”
Dr. Myhrvold’s solution to this challenge is a twofold process developed by the “Modernist Cuisine” laboratory team. First, put the beef patty in a plastic bag and cook it sous vide — immersed in warm water for about half an hour until the core temperature reaches about 130 degrees. Next, dip the patty in liquid nitrogen for 30 seconds to freeze the outer millimeter of the meat, and then deep-fry in 450-degree oil for one minute.
“The freezing followed by the burst of high heat lets you brown the outside without overcooking the inside,” Dr. Myhrvold said. And the deep-frying is supposed to be a technological improvement over the classic White Castle spatula-on-a-griddle technique.
“On a griddle,” he explained, “even when you press a burger with a spatula, you can’t make all of it contact the surface because the edge of the burger is crenellated, with all these nooks and crannies formed by the cylinders of raw meat. But if you put it in hot fat, that fat penetrates and you get a super-thin layer of crispy Maillard browning all the way around those meat fibers.”
