Sous Vide Your Burgers This Summer For Juiciest Results Possible

Trying to cook homemade burgers as delicious as restaurants serve can seem like an uphill battle. For a simple food, hamburgers can be tricky to get just right. Figuring out the correct way to calculate burger cook time on the grill is a bit of a science. And keeping the meat on the heat long enough to bring your patties up to temp without overcooking them? Occasionally, a horrid endeavor. That's why, for foolproof and deliciously juicy burgers, you need to try sous vide.

Cooking ground beef patties in a warm water bath can seem like a bizarre technique, but trust us — it's actually genius. The beauty of sous vide is that it allows you to gently bring your food of choice up to a pre-set temperature. No, it's not the quickest method. But 45 minutes to a few hours in a sous vide bath followed by a quick, screaming-hot sear will produce luscious, moist burgers. Just cook it to at least the minimum internal temp for ground beef (the USDA recommends 160 degrees for ground meat), then sear the outside. We bet that you'll never want to grill burgers the "normal" way ever again!

There are a few tips and tricks for successful sous vide burgers. For one thing, you may want to forego fattier beef. While the best meat-to-fat ratio for burgers is usually 80/20, that may be too loose for sous vide. Secondly, ensure that you don't overwork your patties while forming them, as that can make them tough. You'll also want to avoid compressing your meat in the sous vide bag of choice, leading some to recommend a Ziploc bag over a vacuum-seal bag.

"[E]very now and then I like thick burgers. And sous vide is the way to do it!" gushed one Redditor. Overall, users of the social media site have extremely complimentary things to say about the technique, praising its ease of use and effectiveness alike. In the same thread, another user added a surprising tip for amping up texture: "I did it a few days ago and it was the juiciest burger I've ever had in my life. I finished mine off with a food torch to give them some char though as they needed that umph at the end." On yet another Reddit discussion, users praising sous vide were full of helpful advice, like deep-frying the patties for maximum flavor. Also, one user wrote that they'd found a workaround for delicate patties. "I would form the patties in a ring mold first and then freeze them for a little so they wouldn't get mangled during the vacuum seal," they wrote.

Keep in mind that the primary benefit of sous vide burgers is not convenience, minimal prep, or speed of service. What sous vide does promise is a hands-off way to ensure your burgers are cooked exactly the way you want them, while maintaining an enviable juiciness that other cooking methods can't replicate. The sous vide process is actually surprisingly friendly to beginners as well, making the process of producing perfect BBQ specimens a little less intimidating.