The Art of Manliness - The Secrets to Making the Perfect Burger

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. 0.83

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%? 0.93

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. 0.83

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 0.95

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 1.00

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 0.92

00:21:46.180 I, I don't know, a steak at a shitty steakhouse. 0.78

00:21:51.880 So we talked about the Corona burger. 0.98

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. 0.99

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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The Art of Manliness - June 30, 2021

The Secrets to Making the Perfect Burger

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