At chef Nathan Zammit’s Geelong restaurant Smashville (and its offshoot in Melbourne’s Il Mercato Centrale), smash burgers reign supreme. This style of burger sees balls of ground beef pressed into thin patties directly on the grill, resulting in edges that are charred, crisp and a bit chewy.
“I really like smash burgers, mainly because of the fact that you get that caramelisation happening on the grill,” says Zammit. “It’s thin and crispy patties, so you’re still getting that maximum flavour without it being this big, heavy burger patty.”
The method ensures the entire surface of the patty is in contact with the hotplate, allowing for a deep, even browning and those signature lacy edges. The best burgers, though, are about more than just how the beef is cooked.
“A proper smash burger is all about balance: crispy beef, soft bun, punchy pickles, creamy sauce, and then the cheese ties it all together,” he says.
For burger chefs like Zammit, that cheese is quite particular – so much so that the style is generally termed “burger cheese” and it is, nearly without exception, the choice of American-style burgers everywhere. But what exactly makes the ubiquitous yellow slice so burger-appropriate that it’s become the gold standard?
The perfect cheese for a perfect burger
“Essentially, burger cheese is a processed cheese designed specifically for burgers,” Zammit says. “It’s made from real cheese and real milk, but it’s got a couple of extra stabilisers that help it melt consistently and stay creamy without splitting.” It’s that characteristic – melting without splitting – that makes burger cheese uniquely suited to its beef-and-bun home ground compared with other cheeses. “A regular cheddar – or Swiss cheese, if you want to do something a little bit gourmet – would generally get oily or clumpy when it’s heated up. Burger cheese just gives that perfect, even melt across a patty.”
The melting properties of burger cheese might be the number one reason chefs like Zammit prefer it, but texture isn’t far behind. “The texture is smooth, sort of velvety … When you bite into your burger, it’s not going to break apart – it’ll nicely coat your smash burger.”
The style’s flavour, compared to the sharpness of cheddar or the sweet nuttiness of Swiss, is subtle, but it’s another key part of the charm. “It’s slightly rich, slightly salty, not too sharp,” says Zammit. “It enhances the beef so it’s not actually competing with it, and it has that slightly umami flavour that just rounds everything out.”
How Zammit gets the best out of his burger cheese
Of course, for all its good qualities, burger cheese isn’t much without a patty to rest on. If you’re looking to get that burger joint quality, you’ll want to use a good quality cheese (Smashville uses slices from Anchor Food Professionals) and get those patties cooked just right.
“The way that we cook our patties, we do a double patty of roughly about 80 grams each patty,” says Zammit. “Then we smash it super thin on a hotplate – it doesn’t have to be a screaming high heat – and we’ll let our beef caramelise for about 45 seconds to a minute, because they are so thin. Then we’ll flip the beef and let it cook probably for another 30 seconds, and then just at the last minute before we’re going to take it off the grill, we’ll put on two slices of the Anchor Food Professionals [cheese] on each patty, so that when they stack up on top of each other, the cheese naturally melts nice and fast.”
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Anchor™ Food Professionals. Think your restaurant, diner, pub or venue can make the ultimate Aussie burger? Join the competition (and make sure to use two slices of Anchor Food Professionals cheese) for the chance to win a $2000 gift card, $2000 in local media investment, $500 worth of free cheese and a feature in Broadsheet.
