The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025


The Secrets to Making the Perfect Burger


Episode Stats

Misogynist Sentences

4

Hate Speech Sentences

3


Summary

When Chris Kroner took his first head chef position at an upscale restaurant, he inherited a menu which featured a popular burger. At first, he resented having to hold on to it, but then he began to wonder, and be captured by, how he might experiment with and elevate this sandwich standby. And thus began a decade-long obsession with creating the perfect, mouth-wateringly tasty burger. In his new book, A Burger to Believe In: Recipes and Fundamentals, Chris shares how he turned what he learned in his quixotic quest into the Bay Area s famous Kroner Burger, as well as accessible tips that can be used by the average backyard chef to level up their burger game.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I'm Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:00:10.960 When Chris Kroner took his first head chef position at an upscale restaurant, he inherited
00:00:14.780 a menu which featured a popular burger.
00:00:16.760 At first, he resented having to hold on to it, but then he began to wonder, and be captured
00:00:20.420 by, how he might experiment with and elevate this sandwich standby, thus began a decade-long
00:00:24.640 obsession with creating the perfect, mouth-wateringly tasty burger.
00:00:27.780 In his new book, A Burger to Believe in, Recipes and Fundamentals, Chris shares how he turned
00:00:31.880 what he learned in his quixotic quest into the Bay Area's famous Kroner Burger, as well
00:00:36.020 as accessible tips that can be used by the average backyard chef to level up their burger
00:00:39.460 game.
00:00:40.060 Chris shares some of those tips today on the show, beginning with the best kind of beef
00:00:42.660 chuck to use in your burgers, and why the method you use to cook your burgers should vary depending
00:00:46.440 on their fat content.
00:00:47.560 We then get into why Chris likes to use dry-aged beef in his burgers, and how you can make your
00:00:50.860 own, and the kind of mini-fridge you'd keep in a dorm room.
00:00:53.140 From there, we delve into the optimal size and shape of the patty, Chris's surprising pick
00:00:57.000 for buns, the ideal proportionality of toppings, and Chris's take on the desirability of putting
00:01:01.460 ketchup on your burger.
00:01:02.720 We also get into our mutually conflicted feelings about pairing one's burger with french fries,
00:01:06.540 and if you need to get your burger fixed on the run, what fast food chain Chris thinks
00:01:10.240 has the best burgers.
00:01:11.600 After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash burger.
00:01:24.540 Chris Kroner, welcome to the show.
00:01:27.000 How are you?
00:01:28.080 I am doing great, because today we're talking about my favorite topic, hamburgers.
00:01:33.160 I was actually thinking the other day about this.
00:01:35.300 If someone said, like, I can never eat steak again, I'd be okay with that.
00:01:39.220 I wouldn't have a problem.
00:01:40.000 But if someone said, Brett, you'll never be able to eat a hamburger for the rest of your
00:01:44.140 life, I'd be pretty bummed about that.
00:01:47.000 So what's going on there?
00:01:47.760 Why am I so attached?
00:01:48.840 I think a lot of other people feel the same way, too.
00:01:51.200 Like, why are we so attached to the hamburger?
00:01:53.020 I mean, it's, I feel like it's a, and I would say American, but I don't even know that that's
00:01:59.620 necessarily true.
00:02:00.560 It's just, it's so, such a ubiquitous food item that almost anyone has some kind of generally
00:02:09.740 positive experience of eating a hamburger.
00:02:12.360 You can express a lot, and whether, and almost anyone who eats it will have some point of
00:02:18.660 reference.
00:02:19.600 I mean, what was your, what's your first memory of eating a hamburger?
00:02:23.120 Like, what was?
00:02:24.260 I mean, I typically associate hamburgers, like grill, like, yeah, like Independence Day cookouts
00:02:29.540 in my backyard with my family.
00:02:32.220 Yeah.
00:02:32.380 And I feel like that's, it's that way for most people.
00:02:34.360 So, but it's, I mean, it's just a, you know, relatively easy to cook.
00:02:38.140 And I mean, even in a lot of instances, like a, a bad hamburger isn't, it isn't terrible.
00:02:46.000 It isn't terrible.
00:02:47.160 Totally.
00:02:48.300 It's so relatively satisfying.
00:02:49.900 And I think that's part of the beauty of it.
00:02:53.280 Okay.
00:02:53.640 So in your book, A Burger to Believe In, you walk people through on how to make your signature
00:02:57.380 Kroner burger, but along the way, you give these great accessible tips for the home
00:03:00.820 cook on how to level up their burger game.
00:03:02.600 So let's talk about some of these tips.
00:03:03.840 So on your hamburgers, you like to keep things simple with the toppings or tomato, lettuce,
00:03:07.920 onion, pickle, but you spend a lot of time talking about the main event of a hamburger,
00:03:12.000 which is the meat.
00:03:13.220 You use dry aged beef in the Kroner burger, and we'll talk about why you do that here in
00:03:16.800 a bit, but what's your go-to meat for a great work-a-day burger?
00:03:20.760 I mean, I always recommend freshly ground beef, even if you, I mean, if you can, I feel like
00:03:27.500 at this point in most, most places in the country, there's a grocery store with a butcher
00:03:33.480 counter.
00:03:34.360 Ideally, if you can choose the pieces you want ground, and then I prefer a single grind,
00:03:41.560 relatively rough.
00:03:42.740 So when we set out to make this accessible for everyone, we went to the grocery store
00:03:50.380 next to my house, a Whole Foods, a Albertsons, and just bought every variation of ground beef
00:03:57.840 that we could find.
00:03:58.620 Packaged, frozen, fresh in the case, ground by their butcher, blah, blah, blah.
00:04:02.580 I think we tasted like 35 or 40 different patties side-by-side, and what we found was the majority
00:04:10.220 of the pre-packaged stuff, tons of water.
00:04:14.560 Frozen or not frozen, there's just like tons and tons and tons of moisture, which there
00:04:19.800 were also ground really fine.
00:04:22.020 So you end up with is difficult to get any kind of color or like good sear.
00:04:27.040 Just that like weepy, gross, I don't even know what you want to call it.
00:04:33.200 I know what you're talking about.
00:04:34.040 There's like a...
00:04:34.600 Not good.
00:04:35.160 Yeah, there's some frozen patties that we get from Costco, and it's convenient because
00:04:40.200 you just throw them on there, frozen, and they cook.
00:04:42.320 It's funny, whenever you cook it on one side, on the side that's not being grilled, like
00:04:45.360 this weird, gross stuff grows out of it.
00:04:48.100 So that's just water, pretty much.
00:04:49.700 That's water and fat.
00:04:51.000 I mean, the other part of that packaged ground beef is often like ground so fine or ground
00:04:55.760 so many times that the fat is practically emulsed into the protein.
00:05:01.740 And then once you cook it, because it is so like mashed and ground, it'll just weep out
00:05:11.040 of the patty.
00:05:12.700 Anyway, so fresh is always my preference.
00:05:16.400 It's not to say that you can't make a decent burger with something pre-packaged.
00:05:21.440 Grilling over charcoal or wood, also preferable in my opinion, depending on what kind of burger
00:05:26.400 you're making.
00:05:26.940 Like when we...
00:05:27.560 If I make a cheeseburger, we always cook that on the griddle.
00:05:30.860 The cheeseburger, if you're cooking on the griddle, you have a higher fat percentage.
00:05:35.060 I think that like overall, like especially over the grill, 20 to 30% fat, but anything more
00:05:44.760 than that, and you end up with a lot of grill flare up or like for our cheeseburger that
00:05:49.440 we would serve in the restaurant, it was almost 40% fat, but it's cooked on a griddle.
00:05:55.000 So you don't have to worry about the grill flare.
00:05:58.020 Okay, so if you're cooking a burger with lower fat, just grilling over the grill would be
00:06:06.100 okay.
00:06:06.520 But if it's higher fat, maybe one of those cast iron griddles and put it on the grill
00:06:10.440 and cook your burger on that?
00:06:12.960 Yes.
00:06:13.840 Okay.
00:06:14.420 So fat percentage, is that just whatever your preference is?
00:06:18.900 Or do you have one that you like?
00:06:21.220 Do you like the 40%?
00:06:23.140 I mean, the Kroner burger is 30%.
00:06:24.920 I mean, the other part of like, if you're, so if you're using freshly ground beef and
00:06:29.840 it is only ground once, you should end up with like pieces of fat in the grind, which
00:06:35.740 don't render as quickly and also help with getting like a crusty caramelized exterior and
00:06:43.240 texture.
00:06:43.920 Yeah.
00:06:44.420 I guess coarsely ground fat about 30% is, is my personal go-to.
00:06:50.300 All right.
00:06:50.800 So avoid the, the frozen prepackaged stuff, get it freshly ground.
00:06:54.400 And that's easy to do.
00:06:55.220 You can go to your butcher and just say, give me some of that and grind it up and they'll
00:07:00.520 do it.
00:07:01.380 In your burger, the Kroner burger, you use dry aged beef.
00:07:05.540 And why do you do that?
00:07:06.180 Like what flavor does that impart to the burger that you otherwise wouldn't get with just
00:07:10.240 fresh beef?
00:07:10.880 The meat really benefits from the enzymatic process that happens when you are dry aging.
00:07:20.340 So there's a slow breakdown of proteins that makes the beef more tender.
00:07:28.180 The dry aging process also is a, you know, it's, it's controlled dehydration.
00:07:33.040 So there's a concentration of flavor.
00:07:34.900 So it's, I mean, it's really those two aspects of it that I'm after both the combination of
00:07:41.460 the taste, the tenderization, and then with less moisture, the quality of the sear or
00:07:47.520 char that you can get on the beef is significantly improved.
00:07:52.100 And it, I mean, it kind of, you know, a hundred years ago, whatever, 150 years ago, if you,
00:07:58.560 you had a dairy cow and eventually you, it stops giving you milk and you'd have to eat
00:08:03.060 it.
00:08:03.540 The dry aging process was as much of a method of like storage and preservation.
00:08:08.780 I mean, I guess it was more a method of storage and preservation than it was anything else.
00:08:13.060 So it, it really, this kind of goes, goes back to that, that very traditional way of preserving
00:08:22.460 meat.
00:08:23.880 And with your burger, the Kroner burger, you serve it rare.
00:08:26.860 Why rare?
00:08:28.220 And I mean, what's the benefit of that?
00:08:30.520 In part, it is because again, if it's dry aged and it's coarsely ground.
00:08:34.880 So even with that high fat percentage, if it is cooked much beyond medium, I personally
00:08:42.040 don't think that the, you're, you're doing justice to the taste or the texture that was
00:08:48.120 intended.
00:08:48.920 I feel like the combination of like the really nicely kind of caramelized exterior combined
00:08:55.600 with the texture of the rare interiors, like you really get the best version.
00:09:00.180 You're getting the best expression of how the beef tastes.
00:09:03.420 I personally think it's texturally more appealing, but again, that's specific to that kind of
00:09:10.340 grind.
00:09:11.000 If it is a less coarsely ground or ground twice or a thinner patty, then I don't know necessarily
00:09:18.800 that how rare it is matters in the same way.
00:09:23.660 Gotcha.
00:09:23.980 And then people with dry age, most, a lot of grocery stores, they have dry age beef.
00:09:27.520 I know one of the local grocery stores here in Tulsa, they have dry age beef.
00:09:30.680 So this is accessible.
00:09:32.000 You, you highlight in the book, you walk people through on how to dry age beef if they want
00:09:36.580 to on their own.
00:09:37.300 But I've heard that's a pretty, it can be, if you don't have the right equipment, it can
00:09:39.900 be pretty finicky.
00:09:41.360 Like it's hard to do, right?
00:09:44.040 No.
00:09:44.640 No.
00:09:45.080 Okay.
00:09:45.660 So I've heard, okay.
00:09:46.580 Someone's like, don't ever try to dry age your own beef.
00:09:48.240 It's going to turn out bad.
00:09:49.580 I mean, well, so that was another.
00:09:51.280 In the, in the course of writing the book, it was like at the restaurant, we had a humidity
00:09:56.740 controlled walk-in with big fans dedicated to dry aging and, you know, roughly 2,500
00:10:03.500 pounds of beef in rotation at any time.
00:10:07.760 Taking that and making it accessible for the home cook was one of the biggest kind of hurdles
00:10:14.980 that Paulo and I were just trying to figure out.
00:10:17.740 Cause at the time, I mean, there were, it's like, I think the whole foods near my house
00:10:21.440 had some dry aged beef, but it's not even in somewhere like Northern California at the
00:10:27.340 time, which I mean, we were started writing in 2015.
00:10:31.420 It's just not, not particularly easy to find.
00:10:35.340 It was like, okay, well, how do we, how do we create a kind of a recipe for dry aging
00:10:41.660 that anyone could do with a little bit of effort?
00:10:44.140 And we looked at, you know, there's all, we're all sorts of articles about people using,
00:10:48.420 it's like Koji on a rack in your refrigerator, or just putting a piece of beef on your refrigerator.
00:10:54.640 This, there's like a, there's some kind of like bag or something that people used.
00:11:01.420 And none of it, none of it is really doing what you want it.
00:11:04.860 You can't really dry age a steak or like a pound of meat.
00:11:08.920 It's like, you need to use a larger piece of meat to, to really get the effect that you're
00:11:15.440 looking for and to end up with something usable.
00:11:17.880 It's like, if you were to dry age, just a steak for 30 days, you're going to end up
00:11:21.580 with a, you know, a piece of leather, not something that you want to eat.
00:11:24.600 So in, in trying to, trying to solve this problem, we, I don't even remember where the
00:11:33.360 mini refrigerator came from.
00:11:35.040 We use a mini refrigerator, like you would have in a dorm room and a desk fan, and we
00:11:41.520 sanitized it really, really well and dry age to chuck in a, in a mini fridge.
00:11:46.780 So a whole chuck fits kind of perfectly cut into two pieces in a small refrigerator and
00:11:52.720 the constantly moving air is the sanitation of the constantly moving air are very, very
00:11:56.500 important.
00:11:57.240 And because of the freezer element in the refrigerator, it also had appropriate humidity.
00:12:04.340 Cause one of the, you know, one of the things about dry aging that sounds counterintuitive
00:12:09.140 is that you dry age with pretty high humidity in order to, to control that process of dehydration.
00:12:16.040 If it's, if the chamber is bone dry, then you're going to end up with jerky before you
00:12:20.620 have usable dry age beef.
00:12:23.020 So we, I did this experiment on my own.
00:12:25.180 Paolo did it on his own.
00:12:27.380 And then they had a couple of other, I had a dry age to whole, a whole ribeye for like
00:12:34.480 three or four months in a mini fridge under his desk in his office, which I don't know.
00:12:40.380 I don't think his coworkers were particularly excited about until they ate the steaks.
00:12:44.200 So it actually is, I mean, you obviously have to be very careful because you don't want to
00:12:49.260 end up with a small refrigerator full of rotten beef, but if you handle it correctly, it's
00:12:56.380 pretty straightforward as long as the meat is dried off and the chamber is sanitary and
00:13:01.460 you're not constantly opening and closing it, we didn't really end up with much exterior
00:13:06.820 mold, if any at all.
00:13:08.540 And it works surprisingly well.
00:13:10.320 So that, so that was how we kind of solved that problem.
00:13:13.820 But now, and I regret not thinking about it when we were doing it, but now it's like
00:13:17.960 people sell dry age specific refrigerators for the home, but you can pull it off with about
00:13:25.980 a hundred dollars if you'd, if you'd like to go the mini fridge route.
00:13:30.940 We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
00:13:35.500 And now back to the show.
00:13:37.540 All right.
00:13:38.100 So a go to me, like, so you want to go fresh ground.
00:13:40.340 Let's recap your fresh ground on the beef fat percentage, 30 to 40, depending on what
00:13:44.820 your preference is.
00:13:45.520 And then don't be afraid to try the dry aged beef.
00:13:49.480 It'll give it a nice, different flavor, different texture.
00:13:52.500 Let's talk about with a burger.
00:13:54.420 One thing you really focused on is proportions.
00:13:56.500 So let's talk about the size and shape of a patty.
00:13:58.700 Like where, what do you think is the best size and shape of a, of a burger patty?
00:14:03.460 And like, where do you think a lot of people mess up on this?
00:14:05.540 Uh, personally, I, I want a burger that you can hold in one hand and never put down if
00:14:15.260 you don't want to, before you finish it.
00:14:16.800 I also want a burger that is satisfying on its own, but it, if you wanted to eat too,
00:14:24.180 you're not going to feel sick.
00:14:26.080 Yeah.
00:14:26.180 So our patty is five ounces, four inch mold.
00:14:30.300 I feel like very often people use inappropriate buns or inappropriately sized buns.
00:14:35.380 It's like the bun should have texture, but I, I don't want something that is super bready,
00:14:42.860 crusty on the exterior.
00:14:44.120 I personally, like, I don't want brioches too fatty for a burger in my opinion.
00:14:49.400 And then just like the, the actual size of the bun.
00:14:53.280 It's like, you don't want a four inch thick top bun with a one inch thick patty or a quarter
00:15:02.120 inch thick patty and a huge bun or a huge patty and a huge bun.
00:15:06.540 I think the, I guess the, the, the biggest mistakes are the, the, or the giant patties.
00:15:12.060 Like I, I, I don't know about you, but I generally don't want to eat an eight ounce ground beef
00:15:17.120 patty on something the size of a half a loaf of bread.
00:15:21.100 Yeah.
00:15:22.660 You don't want hockey pucks.
00:15:24.380 You don't want hockey pucks.
00:15:26.020 You don't want meatloaf.
00:15:28.400 Do you don't, do you like to go like really thin or is just like you a happy medium between
00:15:31.960 thick and thin?
00:15:33.000 Oh, they're about, so it's four inches around and a half, about a half inch high.
00:15:36.900 Okay.
00:15:37.500 And then when it cooks a little less than a half inch.
00:15:40.100 Okay.
00:15:40.580 And when it cooks, it'll cook down a little bit.
00:15:42.260 It'll shrink.
00:15:43.700 Let's see other things.
00:15:44.580 I mean, if you're using something that doesn't have a ton of water in it, it shouldn't shrink.
00:15:48.740 Okay.
00:15:49.100 So again, coarsely, freshly ground shouldn't shrink.
00:15:54.160 I mean, unless you over, you know, cook it to death, but you shouldn't lose that much.
00:15:58.420 I mean, that's another effect of it being ground multiple times is that you're, you know, you're
00:16:03.460 really have to run the risk of destroying the cellular structure.
00:16:08.300 And so the moisture is much more likely to escape.
00:16:14.100 Yes.
00:16:14.620 Okay.
00:16:15.260 All right.
00:16:15.720 So not too thick, not too thin, not too big around.
00:16:19.480 Like you want it, don't want it so big.
00:16:22.080 It's like going off of the bun because then you can't hold it with the entire time, but
00:16:26.260 you don't want it so small that you'll have an old lady asking, where's the beef from the
00:16:31.120 Wendy's commercial from the eighties.
00:16:32.460 And then, so let's talk about seasoning the burger.
00:16:34.740 Do you like to season your burger before cooking?
00:16:37.360 I season right before cooking with salt only.
00:16:40.820 So if you're cooking it on a griddle, I usually put a very small amount of room temperature
00:16:47.620 butter on one side.
00:16:48.920 So you'd make sure you get nice caramelization on that first side on the grill, like medium
00:16:53.480 high to high heat.
00:16:54.760 At least for that initial char, I generally cook, like I cook one side longer than the
00:17:00.440 other, which is a good way if you want it to be rare, it's a good way to get lots of
00:17:05.440 caramelization and texture without overcooking it.
00:17:09.900 So for that, you know, five ounce, four inch around patty, depending on how temperature
00:17:16.880 of the meat, when you're, when you cook it, usually cook it for about a minute and a half
00:17:20.640 on one side and 30 seconds on the other side, or a minute and 30 seconds or two minutes and
00:17:25.960 30 seconds.
00:17:27.320 And the same when I cook it in a pan.
00:17:30.080 And then with regards to everything else, it's really just about everything being in
00:17:32.940 proportion.
00:17:33.300 So it's like we have, we use five slices of pickles, we use three or four, depending
00:17:41.860 on the size of the onion, pieces of onion that are cut about a quarter inch thick, charred
00:17:46.380 on one side, raw on the other.
00:17:48.240 It's like four pieces of iceberg lettuce.
00:17:51.880 I always take the ribs out, like the really white part.
00:17:55.260 Some people like that.
00:17:56.460 Most people don't.
00:17:57.820 So you end up with consistent texture.
00:18:00.760 They always toast the buns.
00:18:02.100 So we butter the buns, toast them on a griddle buttered side down.
00:18:07.460 So you get, you get that caramelization, you get the texture from that.
00:18:11.800 In addition to a little bit of steam that softens the rest of the bun.
00:18:15.480 So you have that combination of crunchy toasted texture and soft pliable bun.
00:18:23.300 Well, speaking of the bun.
00:18:24.160 So you mentioned there's, you have like an idea, like you don't want to, a bun that's
00:18:27.660 too bready, you don't like brioche because it's too fatty.
00:18:30.440 And in the book, you mentioned like, there's nothing wrong with just the bag of buns, like
00:18:34.860 the wonder bread buns.
00:18:36.380 Like they're, they're pretty solid burger bun.
00:18:39.200 It's not too bready, not too thick.
00:18:41.600 And you don't, it has a taste, but it doesn't like take away from the taste of the meat.
00:18:46.540 Yeah.
00:18:46.880 I mean, as long as you, you know, can get over the mental hurdle of what they might be
00:18:51.120 made of texturally there.
00:18:53.700 I, I, like my, I would, my go-to in a grocery store is that bun versus like a brioche bun
00:19:00.120 or my, maybe my most hated a pretzel bun.
00:19:04.140 Oh, you don't like the pretzel.
00:19:05.380 I'm a fan of the pretzel.
00:19:06.560 Why don't you like the pretzel bun?
00:19:08.480 Texture.
00:19:09.500 The texture.
00:19:10.240 Yeah.
00:19:11.540 So what about cheese?
00:19:13.220 The Kroner burger doesn't have cheese, but people.
00:19:15.700 No, and that was the function of the cheddar mayonnaise.
00:19:19.180 So we emulsify aged white cheddar cheese into mayonnaise, which might sound complicated, but
00:19:24.800 it's actually very, very easy.
00:19:26.100 And in part that way, it was to try and get all of, you know, all of the, all the tastes
00:19:32.060 with the minimal number of components.
00:19:34.440 So for, I mean, for the Kroner burger, I never really put cheese on it because the cheddar
00:19:38.560 mayonnaise serves that function.
00:19:39.900 If anything, put blue cheese on it occasionally.
00:19:43.360 But for the cheeseburger, my personal preferences is American cheese.
00:19:49.820 Why not?
00:19:50.580 Yeah.
00:19:50.920 Why not cheddar or a type of different type of cheese?
00:19:53.100 What's great about the American cheese?
00:19:55.780 Texture.
00:19:56.580 Gotcha.
00:19:56.840 And do you melt, like, do you like put it on the burger while it's still on the grill,
00:20:00.300 let it melt?
00:20:02.140 Yeah.
00:20:02.320 So with the cheeseburger, we would kind of do the opposite.
00:20:07.520 Well, I guess now I do do the opposite cooking process, right?
00:20:11.340 Cook the first side for a short period of time, flip it over, put the cheese on top,
00:20:17.320 and then cook the second side for a longer amount of time so that it would give the cheese
00:20:22.060 an opportunity to melt.
00:20:23.460 But you would still end up with like a medium rare interior.
00:20:27.080 Here's a question.
00:20:28.100 Might be controversial.
00:20:29.100 Are there any condiments you think, like, I mean, by condiments, I'm thinking like mustard,
00:20:34.260 mayonnaise, ketchup, that should never go on a burger.
00:20:37.340 Because I know people have really heated opinions about this.
00:20:39.880 What's yours?
00:20:41.400 I mean, we never, we did not ever put ketchup on the burger.
00:20:47.360 And then often we would do events and things and not have any ketchup at all if we didn't
00:20:54.080 have French fries, which people found confounding and angering.
00:21:00.140 And I feel like I had much stronger opinions about this in the past.
00:21:07.900 No, not necessarily.
00:21:09.540 I mean, I really think it's about, I mean, I personally don't, I'm going to say that I
00:21:13.900 don't like to put ketchup on a burger.
00:21:15.980 But if I, if it's, if I'm at a barbecue and somebody's, you know, grilling hockey pucks
00:21:23.900 and throwing them on, on toasted room temperature buns from the grocery store, I will definitely
00:21:32.320 cover it and ketchup and mayonnaise.
00:21:34.660 It's like putting a one sauce on a poorly cooked steak.
00:21:38.860 Yeah.
00:21:39.640 It's like, I mean, I wouldn't put a one on a, uh, on like 120 day dry aged ribeye, but
00:21:46.180 I, I don't know, a steak at a shitty steakhouse.
00:21:51.880 So we talked about the Corona burger.
00:21:53.560 We talked about it, you know, the cheeseburger.
00:21:54.940 Are there any other burger variations that you like?
00:21:57.220 Uh, for a while I was making a version of the cheeseburger that was just raw white
00:22:01.020 onions and kind of sweet, pretty spicy mustard.
00:22:04.800 So it was raw onions that almost like yellow mustard, but spicier than that and pickles
00:22:10.040 and cheese.
00:22:10.860 And that was pretty good.
00:22:12.200 That sounds good.
00:22:13.180 I do like a burger with blue cheese.
00:22:14.980 That is good too.
00:22:16.280 With either like just blue cheese or like a big piece of raw onion, like a double plate
00:22:22.680 of burger with bacon occasionally.
00:22:24.240 Well, that's yeah.
00:22:24.900 Bake the bacon.
00:22:25.840 So a bacon burger is like a type of bacon you'd like to use for that.
00:22:31.020 I buy all of our, all of our meat comes, a friend of mine started a meat company called
00:22:36.760 cream co and they're based in Oakland and we, I buy everything from them at this point.
00:22:42.160 So he works with producers and predominantly it's California, Oregon, Washington state.
00:22:48.120 And they make a really, they have a really nice bacon that we buy.
00:22:53.380 So it's, I mean, it's not too thick, not too smoky, dry cured.
00:22:58.040 Don't put a ton of it on it.
00:22:59.180 I usually put a couple, a couple slices, if anything.
00:23:02.300 I mean, the other, my other favorite is pimento cheese.
00:23:05.700 That's interesting.
00:23:06.380 That's an interesting, I never heard of that.
00:23:07.660 That sounds interesting though.
00:23:08.940 Which is, which is really, really good.
00:23:10.620 And we actually, so over the course of this past year, we accidentally started a retail
00:23:16.080 seafood company here in LA called Mayday, which is how we've been selling Kroner Burger
00:23:22.720 burger kits and the other, like the butchery items and stuff.
00:23:26.600 So we sell dry aged beef and all that kind of stuff.
00:23:29.040 But we started making pimento cheese with, with lobster in it.
00:23:34.460 And so lately we have been making cheeseburgers that are just a toasted bun, lobster pimento
00:23:41.520 cheese, and a patty of pickles.
00:23:44.620 And it's really, really, really good.
00:23:48.680 All right.
00:23:48.800 So let's recap here.
00:23:49.840 All sorts of the meat, 30%.
00:23:51.400 30%, you want to go fresh ground, try the dry aged, size of the patty, we're looking
00:23:56.420 at four inches round, just salt before, again, we're keeping it simple, just salt.
00:24:01.100 Yep.
00:24:01.420 And then bun, just go with the Wonder Bread bun.
00:24:05.280 Cheese, American cheese has that creamy texture.
00:24:08.100 Condiments, again, keep it simple.
00:24:09.720 Here'd be like sides with a burger.
00:24:11.160 Do you have like a go-to side?
00:24:12.720 Fries.
00:24:14.080 What kind of fry though?
00:24:15.020 So here's, I've been, so like lately I've started, I don't, I used to, when you're a
00:24:19.500 kid, like that's like, you love French fries, but as I've gotten older, I've kind of stopped
00:24:23.880 liking French fries because they just kind of, I feel like it just takes up space and
00:24:28.720 sometimes they're not, most French fries aren't very good.
00:24:31.120 This is true.
00:24:32.160 So for you, like what is an ideal French fry like?
00:24:35.340 I think the potato is really important.
00:24:37.080 I mean, in my experience using Kennebec potatoes, we get the best results with Kennebec
00:24:43.760 potatoes.
00:24:44.540 They don't caramelize too quickly in the fryer.
00:24:47.260 They stay very crispy.
00:24:48.260 So we, and we would, so we would oil blanch, cut the potatoes, rinse them, oil blanch them
00:24:54.660 at like 300 degrees, freeze them, and then refry them at 375 degrees.
00:25:00.280 And what you, you end up with is between the process of your, I mean, you're almost, I
00:25:07.300 don't want to say confine because they don't cook that long, but you're kind of gently
00:25:12.520 cooking them at 300 degrees.
00:25:14.580 The interior is cooked and then between that process, that part of the process and the
00:25:20.040 freezing, you end up with like a, when you refry it, you have a nice like shell and then
00:25:26.040 the interior is super, you know, cloudy and pillowy.
00:25:30.180 I don't know.
00:25:30.920 I mean, you can, it's like a steak cut.
00:25:34.120 You use russet potatoes and like a steak cut fry is good.
00:25:37.460 Uh, shoestrings aren't bad.
00:25:40.500 Honestly, the best burger side is another burger.
00:25:45.540 That's what I found.
00:25:46.380 I've noticed that I've been doing that more.
00:25:48.100 If I go to like a fast food place, I'd rather get another sandwich or burger than eat the
00:25:55.220 fries that come with it.
00:25:56.800 Yes.
00:25:58.360 Yeah.
00:25:58.800 I've done this.
00:25:59.220 I've noticed with Chick-fil-A.
00:26:00.420 I don't like Chick-fil-A French fries.
00:26:01.880 I know people love the waffle fries at Chick-fil-A, but I'd rather have another spicy chicken
00:26:05.460 sandwich than eat the waffle fries.
00:26:08.300 Uh, yeah.
00:26:09.020 I feel like I still, I still generally order fries because I want to see if they're any
00:26:15.980 good, but they usually are not very good.
00:26:18.920 They usually are not usually fried.
00:26:20.180 Like it's very rare.
00:26:21.000 Like I think the best fast food fry, I like Freddy's fast food.
00:26:24.880 What is Freddy's?
00:26:26.700 It's a, it's a chain.
00:26:28.220 They sell custard and they have cheeseburgers.
00:26:30.780 It's like they specialize in like burgers are really thin, but the fries are shoestrings,
00:26:35.460 but they're like the best fries.
00:26:36.900 Nice.
00:26:37.980 So, oh, here, there's a question.
00:26:39.500 Do you have a, I always ask people this question.
00:26:41.900 I think it's a point of like a good conversation starter.
00:26:44.180 Your favorite, like go-to fast food burger.
00:26:47.360 And it can, it doesn't have to be a national chain.
00:26:49.020 It could also be like a local place, a regional thing as well.
00:26:53.520 So if you're like out, you're driving with friends, you're like, Hey, we need something
00:26:56.360 to eat, pull into this place.
00:26:59.000 I found, well, here in LA, there's, so for like old school kind of fast foodies style
00:27:05.720 burger, there's in Pasadena, there's a place called pie and burger.
00:27:09.660 And that's a favorite.
00:27:11.140 There's also a, it's like a mini chain called high hoe here in LA.
00:27:16.840 And that for like a fast food burger, that's probably my, my favorite in LA.
00:27:21.560 I grew up outside of Detroit.
00:27:24.660 So we used to white castle was, it's pretty great.
00:27:29.040 And then I, when I was doing research for the book, I went to white manna in New Jersey,
00:27:35.060 which is similar to a white castle, but actually delicious.
00:27:39.640 So those are pretty great.
00:27:40.860 I think for like national chain, I think Shake Shack definitely has the most consistent
00:27:47.560 high quality burger that I have found.
00:27:53.080 If Freddy's is similar to Shake Shack, I would say.
00:27:55.440 Nice.
00:27:56.320 Yeah.
00:27:56.840 It's similar to that.
00:27:58.080 My, so I like Freddy's and then my other go-to like regional here in Oklahoma, at least
00:28:03.420 is, is it's a dairy company called Brahms milk, but you also go to these places and they sell
00:28:09.820 burgers and ice cream, whatever.
00:28:12.240 Yeah.
00:28:12.640 The Brahms burger.
00:28:14.040 It's good.
00:28:14.920 It's, it's, I think it's underrated, but I think it's a, it's a solid burger and you
00:28:19.500 can buy a bag of burgers or used to it.
00:28:21.260 Maybe you still can for five bucks.
00:28:22.980 Nice.
00:28:23.620 And just a solid, solid burger.
00:28:25.880 So yeah.
00:28:26.480 Next time in Oklahoma, try Brahms.
00:28:27.700 I think actually there was an article written about Brahms.
00:28:29.700 Like I think in, like, I think it might've been one of the LA newspapers or New York
00:28:34.340 Times or something.
00:28:35.300 I wonder, I feel like that may have been where I, where I heard about it.
00:28:39.740 Yeah.
00:28:40.260 No, Brahms is where it's at.
00:28:41.660 All right.
00:28:42.100 Well, this has been a great conversation.
00:28:43.060 I've got a lot of great tips.
00:28:44.320 Is there some place people can go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:28:47.260 Cronerberger.com.
00:28:48.620 And then, I mean, we post, we still do events here in LA with, we will eventually have a new
00:28:57.600 brick and mortar location.
00:28:59.160 And then if, I mean, the easiest way to directly access the Croner burgers and our cheeseburgers
00:29:06.020 through our company Mayday.
00:29:08.560 So it's maydayseafood.com.
00:29:11.240 Fantastic.
00:29:11.660 Well, Chris Croner, thanks for your time.
00:29:12.660 It's been a pleasure.
00:29:13.560 Thank you so much.
00:29:15.000 My guest today was Chris Croner.
00:29:16.260 He is the author of the book, A Burger to Believe In.
00:29:18.600 It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:29:20.880 Make sure to check out our show notes at aom.is slash burger.
00:29:23.320 We can find links to resources.
00:29:24.760 We can delve deeper into this topic.
00:29:27.600 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.
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00:30:09.660 Until next time, this is Brett McKay.
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