Finding Burger! (Part 1)

What makes a burger truly great?

You know the kind of burger that makes you sit back, sigh, and grin like an idiot.

Four years latter, and I’m still chasing that perfection, tweaking, adjusting, and eating far more than my fair share of burgers. Every time a burger sits tall and proud on the pass, ready to meet its master, I still think: “It’s not perfect yet.”

We all have different views and preferences, so the search for the perfect burger is, as it should be, a deeply personal adventure. I’ve sampled most of the burgers in and around Cape Town, and I’m still learning.

The perfect burger needs to deliver a complex connection between textures and flavours……soft, crunchy, tart, sour, juicy, tender, crisp, umami, and sweet, all in one glorious bite. And I want to be able to pick it up and finish it without the bun disintegrating halfway through.

When we first started this journey, our patty was made from store-bought mince a 70/30 meat-to-fat ratio. We added garlic, onion, egg, breadcrumbs, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, parsley, salt, pepper, mixed herbs, and, somewhere along the line, a spoonful of chutney. It looked and smelled suspiciously like my grandmother’s frikkadel recipe. In hindsight, we should’ve just called it Grandma’s Frikkadel Burger.

We called it homemade… but the real problem was that we had no real control over what went into that mince. Realising that was a turning point. If we were serious about making the perfect burger, finding the right patty had to be the priority.

And so, the real journey began.