In my mind, the difference between a burger and a patty melt is sliced bread versus a bun
When I started Kroner Burger, it was like a very specific set of ingredients
A patty melt was an opportunity to kind of have a foil to the Kroner Burger in that it
has really hot mustard, caramelized onions, both melted cheese as well as a cream sauce
So it's like the Bizarro World Kroner Burger. Hi, I'm Chris Kroner from Kroner Burger in Oakland, California, and Henry's in Berkeley, California
And today we are making dry-aged beef patty melts from my new book, A Burger to Believe In
So we're going to start with some dry-aged beef, a dry-aging process. It reduces the moisture content, so it's concentrating flavor as well as tenderizing
We have two cuts here. This is the ribeye. That's your T-bone
The ribeye has enough of its own fat that you don't necessarily need to add fat
We are going to do two versions of the sandwich, one using a meat grinder, and the second we
will cut by hand. When we were writing the book, we went to the grocery store and bought every variation
of packaged ground, ground from the butcher counter, and it's just never as good, especially the prepackaged
The prepackaged tends to have a ton of additional moisture. Fresh ground, either by your butcher
or if you have the capability of doing it at home, is always preferable. Put the ribeye in the freezer just to chill it down
to make it easier to cut by hand. We're going to cut up the T-bone
so that we can pop it in the freezer and then run it through the grinder. So we operated a corner burger in the mission as a pop-up
and then we opened Kroner Burger the restaurant which was open for three years We recently had a fire that has left the restaurant closed unfortunately
So now we're gonna take our beef that's been cut into half-inch cubes and we're gonna stick it in the freezer
Our meat has chilled in the freezer for about 20, 30 minutes
This is the T-bone, so it's nice and firm. Should grind really well
Load all the beef into our tray, And then we can use our plunger to move it through the grinder
Okay, now that our meat is ground, I'm going to grab the ribeye from the freezers and cut it by hand
So if you don't have a meat grinder, this is the best alternative. As you can see, it's much easier to cut once it has been chilled thoroughly
so you can get really nice even cuts pretty easily. Very gently combine it so that the fat is evenly distributed
This is definitely the luxury version of a patty mount. I'm using a ribeye with all this fat
So you can see the difference between the two. I'm gonna use a ring mold to form them
If you don't have a ring mold, you can use the lid of a jar, just eyeball these patties
Each patty is roughly like four and a half, five ounces. Make sure that it is fully compacted so that it stays together but not that you're overworking it
It's really important that the size of all of your components are in alignment so that
everything is as equal as possible. Do the exact same thing with the ground meat
We're going to put them in the refrigerator to cool them down until it's time to cook
We are going to caramelize the onions. We start with one white onion five tablespoons of unsalted butter Just slice the onion and then gently cook it in the butter over medium heat for about 45 minutes
so the sugar can caramelize. Once they start to cook, you just want to make sure that nothing is sticking to the bottom of the pan
You should really only stir them like three times. So now we just stand here for 45 minutes
Okay, now we're going to make the bechamel, super classic French milk sauce thickened with roux
So we're gonna start by melting the tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon of flour
Whisk it together. The flour will bloom twice, it will turn white very quickly
Once it has done that, add our milk. You wanna stir it as you add the milk
because it will immediately begin to thicken as the milk heats. And you just wanna completely incorporate the roux
so you don't end up with any clumps of flour. You can see how thick it is there
and it will continue to thicken as you heat it. While that is happening, we will add the cream
and then our bay leaf, and a pinch of nutmeg. You don't want it to be too strong
We're gonna add a pinch of salt and a little pepper. It started to boil gently, so this is when it will thicken
So I'm gonna turn the heat down and let it continue to simmer very gently
So our onions have been cooking for about 45 minutes over low heat
As you can see, they are deeply caramelized without being burned. There's like a really sweet, sweet onion and butter smell
That's a great indicator that they're cooked. I actually cook everything this way
So just like butter and whatever the it is just goes in the pan and we cook it until it falls apart
We have some aged white cheddar cheese to be grated. Hot mustard powder just mixed with a little bit
of water, vinegar, salt. We have a sourdough Pullman loaf from She Wolf Bakery here in Brooklyn So to assemble the patty melts we going to brush mustard onto both slices of bread
on one side. We'll then add a little bit of caramelized onion and the grated cheese
Butter the exterior so we can evenly toast the bread on both sides
So here are two sets of patties, hand-cut, ground. We're going to season them with salt pretty liberally
We're going to add a little nock of butter to one side of the patty melt
It just helps to evenly brown and caramelize the meat. Cook it over medium-high heat so that you get lots of browning
but you are not cooking it through. While our patties are cooking, I'm
going to put the sandwiches in the salamander to fully melt the cheese
A minute and a half to two minutes on one side, and then a minute on the other side should give you a nice, rare interior with the ground meat
With the hand cut meat, it's not really as easy to time
because it just doesn't have the same even consistency. Now we're gonna add some bechamel
You can be liberal with the bechamel. Okay, our patty melts are done
Nicely toasted on the exterior, hopefully still very rare on the interior
So here's our perfectly cooked patty melt. And then some dill pickles on the side
It's delicious. It's always delicious. This is one of my favorite things, like, in the world