We Made the World's Best Burger

This might be the hardest thing we've ever attempted. Three countries, five of the world's best burgers, and months of work to combine every element into a single recipe. And if that's not hard enough, we brought in Jay Rayner, the toughest food critic in Britain, to judge if we made the best burger in the world. Okay, chef, so it's nine o'clock. Jay Rayner is coming in at 10.30. But before we could make our own recipe, we wanted to do as much research as possible to see what really makes the best burgers stand out. We couldn't make a video about the best burger in the world without coming to my personal favourite, Black Bear Burger. This is Jau, executive pastry chef of our whole group. Jau's going to get to the bottom of what makes the best burger bun. Look at that. This is the championship burger. Miso butter, mayonnaise on the bottom, bacon, American cheese, three slices of onions, and this incredible demi-brioche bun. Cheers, mate. Cheers. It's really good. Like, nice, light, doesn't fall apart. Very difficult to make a light bun that doesn't fall apart. And I always think that about the potato buns. I always think they disintegrate to nothing, whereas this one holds its shape. For me, though, the sesame adds a whole other sort of dimension to it. It does, it's quite heavy, isn't it, on sesame? I mean, that, to be honest, I don't see how you can get a better burger than that. It's just incredible. It's really good. I can see why it's your favourite now. I haven't tasted this. Are you confident making an ultimate burger bun? I think we can do it. How is the first batch of buns? Well, failed massively, actually. They look good. They taste good. But the texture is a bit off. Oh, it smells really good. All right, chef, sure we'll get there. Nothing to worry about. A few days later, after hours of work, Joe finally cracked the case of the perfect burger bun by combining both demi-brioche and potato bun. He added potato flakes and a bit of butter and oil to enforce the dough, but also give it that signature potato flavour. What are all these? Eight recipes. Look at this. I love it. This is the difference between a pastry chef and a main chef. It's a surgical brain. Okay, so we started with like two potato buns, one quite high on mashed potato, quite heavy. Rather, this one is a little bit less potato and it's a little bit softer. It's very soft. That is, the knife just literally glides through. Right, we'll toast these up. That is light as a feather, my friend. Smells incredible as well. Wow. Gets a bit of that milk bread pull. If you pull it apart, you can see how well the gluten's developed. Potentially a bit groundbreaking. We should brush it and toast it with a bit of beef fat from the ribs. But not bad for a day, always. It's amazing. And Jay will be getting fresh on the day, so he's going to lose his knickers. I should mention that Jay Rayner is one of the most well-respected critics in all of the UK. So if we serve him a bad burger, I'm sure he's going to let us know. To find what makes the best burger patty, we flew out to Valencia to what was voted the best burger in the world. 100 Burgers. That smells amazing. There are two things that are the most important things to know about the way we do things. One of them is that we make everything ourselves. We don't get the cows from a butcher. We buy the cows ourselves. Then we dry age them ourselves as well. Every beef here, it's dry aged. And I always explain this because it's our main characteristic in terms of flavour. It's that beefiness. It's very present. So it's Galician beef. Do you know the grind size? Yeah, it's fine. And then hand pressed? Yeah, no, not pressed. It's mashash. We call it mashash. So we like that it falls apart when it melts in the mouth. That's what we are always looking for. So this is a singular burger. It's got bacon, caramelised onions, cheddar cheese that we import from England. And then a camembert sauce on the down part. Yeah, I chose the temperature myself, okay? It's gonna be on the lowest range, okay? Oh my god, that looks so good. So like, there's so much more flavour than you get in any other burger. Because of the age. It's very intense. The main thing is just how it all marries together. Because you can still taste the predominant flavour is still aged beef. Going burger heaven today. That has like the level of intricacy of like a fine dining dish, but just in a burger form. I might as well just bring Jay Rayner here. 100 Burgers showed us the importance of sourcing the highest quality dry aged beef to maximise flavour. So we've come to the biggest dry aging fridge in the whole of the South of England. How many pieces of meat are rotating through this bite? You can just say thousands, I'd say. So thousands of thousands. Here we were able to find not only the exact beef they used at 100 Burgers, but also a British variation that sounded just as good. Look at the yellow fat on that bad boy. This is what you want. Grass-fed goodness. Look at that. Comes from grass. If it's grain-fed, it's pure white. If it comes from grass, the beta carotene. Get this really nice golden yellow colour. Look at that marbling. And also look at the colour of the fat inside. We're going to take them both down. We're going to be able to taste them and test them to see which is the best. So the two beef option. This one comes from northern Spain. Same type that they're using at 100 Burgers. This one, pretty gnarly, is an English version. So interestingly enough, our friends at 100 Burger agree that this rib cap is one of the best bits in the burger. So what we're going to do is we're going to take these, trim them down slightly, and we're going to season it and then mince the burgers. And the mince grinder we're going to use is going to be 5 mil, as per our good friend at 100 Burgers, Alex. First up, we've got the Spanish Ruby Galicia beef. Oh, look at those little aged flecks of beef going through. We're going in now with the English ex-dairy. So once this is all ground, you just very lightly massage the meat together. So I'm going to start doing my one. I've weighed it into 140 grams. Our old mate Heston says that that is the ideal size and weight for a patty. And we're just going to very gently just massage it together. That looks like a ******* sick patty. Similar size. So I'm going to fine salt those up and we'll go and cook them up. Around about 60 degrees, 56, 60 degrees. So we have our cooked burgers here. Let's try the Galician first. It's not as funky as I thought. No, it makes me wonder how funky his were before they actually got made. That's crazy. And the British? Similar. I'd say that's funkier. I think it's slightly more tender. And a tiny bit more buttery. That's delicious. Both incredible. The flavour and the ageing, you can see the Maillard reaction from using that dry aged beef is amazing. Maybe slightly more massaging as well. It's a little bit crumbly, isn't it? I think I prefer the British. I think there's enough in it to not go British. Nice. That's a nice little cheese board you made there, chef. A variation of cheeses, ranging from the George Moats American Cheese Slice. Who is the founder of Hamburger America in New York, which we visited and tried his incredible burgers. We use very, very high quality American cheese, but it's American cheese. It's not anything else, not cheddar. It's just American cheese. But it has a high dairy content, so it's a very, very good American cheese. Look at that. Unbelievable. Oh, this is good. This is simple, but good. The humble cheddar. We've even tracked down the red Leicester cheddar that Alex used at 100 Burgers, and then a few other little curb pulls. Gouda, Monterey Jack. So we're going to make 12 little burgers, and then we're going to taste them all with a slice of cheese on top to figure out which cheese or cheese combos reign supreme. We've used American cheese at Fallot for five years. So this is a genuinely interesting experiment to see what happens. The American. There. Looks the best. I mean, the Jarlsberg's packing a punch. Nice and melty. So the orangey ones do look kind of better then. The cheddar's like disintegrated into nothing. All the fat's come out of the cheddar. On first appearances, the red Leicester looks great. It's nice. All the orangey ones look good. American obviously looks great. I'm going to give this one a go. It's almost inviting. I will say, it doesn't look like it's melted as well as the others. It tastes like an old shoe. Real fausty. I'm going to look at this one. This looks like the best one. Oh, it's still, it's a really nice melter on it as well. Pretty good. For me, this red Leicester melts really nicely. It's got a really nice flavour, slightly more mature. But the American cheese is superior for meltiness. Which we knew from trying George Moses burgers at Hamburger America. A slice of each. I'm very happy with that combination. On to La Garniche. We're here at Duck, a restaurant in Notting Hill. This may be London's most in-demand burger. We've got a glazed brioche bun with a 55 day aged beef mince. We've got a thick patty which is covered in gorgonzola cheese with a champagne braised onions underneath. They only sell 10 of these bad boys a day. So it's first come, first served. Would you look at that? I love the caramelised onions. It adds a layer of sweetness. It's incomparable to a lot of other burgers I've tried. This might be one of my favourite burgers I've ever had. And the sweetness from the onions I think is something that I've never tasted in a burger before. Which is something I think we should definitely take away. So I'm just going to dice the onion up. So a touch of salt at the beginning. It's going to help the onion break down and season it nice and gently throughout. And when you're cooking anything with a high water content like an onion you're going to start off a lot higher because the water will release a lot of liquid straight away. And then as the water from the onion cooks out and it starts to reduce you're going to lower the temperature as it starts to cook. I'm going in with a generous knob of butter. And once the onion's cooked out that's when we're going to go in with the champagne. Chef, pop the bottle. Yes, Chef. So this is based on a choucroute style onion which is a very classic recipe which uses white wine. But we're making the best burger in the world. We're going with champagne. I think we can all agree it's the best version of wine. Just enough to cover. And we're just going to slowly reduce that down to the sweet and sticky. I'm going to go with a few nubbins of vinegar. Reduce that down. And a knob of butter as well, yeah. Very sweet. Nice and acidic. Really beautiful texture. Sweet and sour onions. This will lift the whole thing. Just as we thought every element of our ultimate burger was done I remembered a dinner we had in New York again. To a burger that had a garnish that was so epic we thought we had to add it to our ultimate burger. We are here at one of the most exclusive restaurants in New York City. This is Four Charles Prime Rib is the full name. This is it. Wagyu burger is unbelievable. I don't think I've ever had bacon as good as that in any burger. It really adds to it. Because I'm not a bacon in my burger guy and I ate that burger and I was like early mac and cheese balls. What is that bacon? So much so that we brought it back to London and we put it on our burger. I've literally tried so much bacon in London and H.G. Walter's bacon, smoked bacon is 100% the best. These are the only people that I trust to recreate the bacon that we had on the Four Charles burger in New York. Thick cut, really beautifully smoked bacon. This is I think going to be the edge for our garnish. But we're going to roast it nicely and caramelise it slowly on one side before removing it, covering it in maple butter and then just almost poaching it in that butter to finish it. It's like soft, crispy on one side but poached on the other. That looks banging chef. I think the bacon needs to be cooked a little bit longer. Like almost like glazed a little bit more so it breaks down a touch more. Let's try something different. So we've got two hour confit bacon, one hour confit bacon and we've got steamed whole bacon. So just a little bit of maple on there and then it's going to go into a hot oven. Bacon, an hour confit, two hours confit and this one is steamed. That was two. Yeah. The two hour one almost feels tougher, maybe an hour. Nice. Now the most contentious part of all, the sauce. The best sauce I've tasted on this quest was the miso brown butter mayo at Black Bear Burger. It's bloody delightful. In there, we've got some lemon juice, a touch of miso and then I'm just going to blend in a tiny touch of pickle juice and some browned off butter. So the sauce debate is very interesting. At the end of the day, George Mox was adamant, no sauce. It's like a hollandaise. That is good. Now I'm just going to put in some mayonnaise. This is our leek mayonnaise. It's nice and smoky. Blend it again. Andrew, come and try this. Score out of 10. Like an eight, at least. Eight, solid. Maybe a touch more sweetness. Fingers, really. Hey, God gave us 10 fingers for a reason. That's ******* hard, this, man. Because when I think burger, I think in Big Mac sauce. Well, why don't we take this and add some of the classic things that we love about the Big Mac sauce? Few chopped gherkins, tiny, tiny bit of ketchup. Could be a hybrid. Tomato essence, ripple through. I mean, for me, I think we should try this and see where it goes. I think it's absolutely delicious. So we've got all of our elements for our perfect burger here. We've got seeded bun. So first of all, we're going to build that base, very similar to what we had at Dove. We're going to get a base of the onions. Next up, the infamous patty. Looks the perfect size as well. Bacon, a tiny more hit of that maple. Pickles. Sauce, our miso sauce is on the top. I have to say, that does look pretty damn good. It's like a hybrid between 100 Burger and 4 Charles. I was a bit worried it was going to be overpowering. But if anything, it's quite heavier. No, but it's quite harmonious. The onions on the bottom really freshen it all up. You can still taste the meat, but I do think you lose a little bit of that dry aged flavor. I think we need to rethink the sauce. But chef, for a first attempt, I reckon we can get this. Pickles, you don't really notice. I think, yeah, I mean, I think maybe chopped up through the sauce, more of a traditional burger sauce. I have to say, chef. The burger, the bun is great. We've done a good job. We have. What do you think about the quantity of beef? Tiny bit more. Tiny bit more, I think so, yeah. So tiny bit more beef. The onions are perfect. Toasting the bun's perfect. Cheese is spot on. And a rethink on the sauce. Hey, it's a good start. That's a do it, okay. That's right. After weeks of research, trying five burgers from three different countries, it was finally time to make our ultimate burger. Joe, how are the buns? I'm happy. They are ******* perfect. Look at those. It's all come together. All come together at the end. Getting ******* nervous, man. I'm just going to hand press it very lightly. We want to grow it by about 10 to 15 percent. So then as it's caramelized, it's going to shrink back into position. We've got a little drizzling of brown butter, just to help melt through the burger as it's searing. Tiny seasoning over the top, just around the base of the tray as well. I'm going to put my cheese on, just as it rests. I'm going to go with the one slice of American, the one slice of the Red Leicester. I'm just going to let that sit under the lights and drizzle down. Just play around with different ratios of the sauce. We've got tomato base, smoked mayo base, and the miso base. Just mixing them together to see how they taste together. It looks like a proper traditional burger sauce. Bit more tomato. I think it's good. Bit in the middle. Tiny bit. All right, let's go with that. We're just going to dice up these pickles. So instead of having like three or four pickles on the burger, we're going to have a nice little brunoise, which we'll just scatter over the top of the bun. These should add a bit of a texture and acidity to the burger. Ready to plate? We're going to go onions on the bottom. The patty. Oh yes. Perfect size. Chef, do you want to go with the bacon? I'm going to go on with two beautiful pieces of bacon. Glazed to perfection. Then we've got our gherkin mix. And then we're going to finish it with our supercharged burger sauce. Actually making me a little bit emotional. What a journey, Chef. It's all come to this point. I have a newfound respect for the burger. All right, this is it. The moment of truth. Let's get this upstairs for Jay to taste. Here we go. Your baby. My big, greasy baby. Don't be so nervous. Considering we serve a thousand burgers a week. So we've got potato bun, which is slightly enriched. Heavy sesame, which gives you a texture for the bun without too much of that softness you get with gherkin. Aged patty, 55 days old. Served just pink, 60 degrees. And hand massaged together. We have some thick cut smoked bacon, which has been confit and brown butter. And then seasoned with black pepper. And then we have some gherkins and miso burger sauce. It does look fabulous. And that thick cut bacon, oi vey. As no rabbi has ever said. Okay. Yeah. I mean, what's really interesting is sometimes when you pile things on top of a burger, you lose the taste of the patty. You can definitely taste this beef. I need to check again. It's been a real journey for us. There's so many little nuances to the burger making process that we've like taken inspiration from. Can I be honest? I know your stuff. I watch your channel a lot. And there's lots of sort of performative stunts and they're fantastic. And I slightly worried when you invited me to do this that I would just have to be nice for the camera. No, it's really, really bloody good. Yes. It's really good. We've essentially combined, it seems like endless burgers, but probably not as endless amount of recipes in this new book that you've written. It is me coming up with recipes inspired by my favourite restaurant dishes. They're not a replacement for going to those restaurants at all, but they are a way of bringing a bit of those ideas into your own kitchen. But it means I get to tell the stories while offering recipes from all over. This video is we made the best burger in the world. What do you think? I am deeply suspicious of the idea of the best of anything, but you can have a burger which is part of that frothy top on top of the mid burgers, which are not worth your time. So have we made the frothy top? You've made the frothy top boys. The heights of the frothy top. You are the head on my burger beer.