But naturally burger spatula’s a bit more to it than just throwing some beef on a hot surface. Five Guys uses very specific products to get that taste exactly right.
Surprisingly, a lot of what goes into a Five Guys burger can be easily found. If you use the correct stuff, and follow the formula, you’ll be making burgers just like they do at Five Guys. Note: condensed recipe at the end for those who don’t like reading. What do you need for burgers? You’ll also need sesame seed buns, deli-style Kraft American cheese, ketchup, mustard, hot sauce, and mayonnaise. For equipment, you’ll need two cooking areas, nonstick parchment paper, a cookie sheet, a food scale, and aluminum foil.
Full ingredients list is at the end with the recipe. The beef Five Guys uses at most of its stores comes from Schweid and Sons, and if you live in the right areas, you might be able to buy some down at the grocery store. 50, and if it’s good enough for Alton, it’s good enough for me. As for the specifics, Five Guys will tell you that the meat is “twice ground. If you head to your local grocery store and ask the butcher for some “twice-ground” meat, he’ll laugh a little and point to the meat sitting in the rack. All grocery meat is ground twice: once at the packing facility and once in store.
So it’s just the same meat you purchase for meatloaf night. Five Guys rolls the meat into 3. 3-ounce balls — if you have a scale, you can get this pretty precise — and then smashes them. If you have a hamburger press, you can use that, but really, any flat surface will get the job done. I’m guessing your kitchen isn’t like that. That’s OK, we can cheat this a little.
The advantage of stainless steel is that it’s naturally cooler than a regular countertop. You can try the press-and-spin, which is exactly what it sounds like, pressing down and turning the pot slightly. If you get uneven pressure, you’ll end up with some funky-looking burgers. Just remember, take them one at a time. Even if you try and smash down two, you’ll end up with weird burgers. You’re not looking for flat as a pancake here, but size and flatness vary from store to store, and even from burger presser to burger presser. Five Guys starts the burgers and the buns at the same time, but on different grills.
Obviously these are at two different temperatures. The buns are not coated with butter or mayonnaise, but they do have more egg flavor than the average sesame seed bun. If you really insist on just toasting the buns in a toaster, you want to aim for a lightly toasted bun and use the bagel setting so you don’t toast the top and bottom of the bun. You can do that, but just live with the shame that you’re cheating. Five Guys doesn’t touch them for about 30 seconds.
After that, dig in — they’re usually pretty stuck to the grill — and flip them. Then flatten the daylights out of ’em. Five Guys uses a heavy press, but like always you can get it done with a spatula providing you press out toward the edges from the middle to get that sucker flat. If you don’t have a heavy press, you won’t get your burgers quite as wide as Five Guys does. There’s a school of thought that says pressing down a burger is akin to leaving kittens floating in a box on a river. But if you do it the right way, you’ll actually make the burger meatier and more flavorful. Five Guys flattens them but in a very specific way: the wrong way.
The trick is to smash immediately once you put meat on the hot surface, but Five Guys doesn’t do that. After the flip and smash, the buns should be just about ready. Five Guys toasts the buns, but they’re certainly not well done. They should just be toasty enough to hold some toppings. For the purpose of this “exact” recipe, we’re going very simple with just “wet” toppings — ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and hot sauce. A side note for you onion fans. Five Guys cooks its onions and mushrooms in clarified butter ahead of time and then just adds them to the burgers.
Let’s start at the top: there’s a very specific order to the sauces. The first sauce that goes down is the hot sauce. Frank’s Original Hot Sauce is the topping of choice, the same that made its bones as the one used on the first Buffalo chicken wings. The next top spread is mayonnaise. Five Guys produces its own private-label mayonnaise, but it shouldn’t be hard to replicate.
On the bottom goes the ketchup and mustard. Five Guys ketchup is 20 calories per serving. Heinz’s 160 milligrams, but Hunt’s comes in right at 180 milligrams. Ketchup gets three rings on the bun — from a small-nosed ketchup dispenser. The mustard is just a standard yellow mustard from Heinz as well.
The burgers have been cooking for about 2 minutes on their flipped side. Five Guys flips again and gives them another press with the spatula. The Five Guys cook witnessed for today’s illustration pressed down like there was no tomorrow. It’s now time to add cheese. Five Guys uses Kraft American cheese, same as when the doors first opened in 1986. You’ll notice the cheese is a bit thicker than the average Kraft processed stuff in the plastic. The one you give to 5-year-olds isn’t the one Five Guys uses.