This article will cover what you can do to keep your juicy burgers from drying out after you cook them, and how to keep burgers as juicy as possible before and after cooking. Hamburger patties can be really juicy when they are cooked correctly, but afterwards, the burger patties can become really dry after being exposed to the air for too long. This can be a problem if you are having to cook a lot of burgers for an entire group, and have a waiting time in betweenbefore the food is served.
We understand that cooking the burgers all at once for a lot of people may not be possible sometimes when the guests won’t get the food until an hour later, so you need a method that can keep the burgers from drying out while they sit and wait. We have some nice solutions that may get the job done for you, and also keep your burgers nice and warm.
Use Sous Vide
This first method involves using sous vide to keep the burgers warm, moist, and ready to go. This involves placing uncooked burger patties in sealed plastic bags to precook them beforehand. The plastic bags can be zip lock bags, or the burger patties can be placed in plastic bags to vacuum seal them with a food vacuum sealer machine.
Sous vide is basically cooking vacuum sealed food in hot water containers with the sous vide kit, before finishing the food by searing it. It keeps the food nice and moist.
If the hamburger patties are placed in zip lock bags, then the air has to be pressed out of the bag before it is sealed to effectively cook the burger patties. Some individuals take the burger patties and refrigerate them first, or freeze them before placing them in the plastic to cook them sous vide. It helps the burger patties to retain their shape beforehand.
Of course, a food ring mold should be used with this process to help reshape the burger meat into nice circle patties too, before the patties are sealed in the bag.
After the burger patties are sealed in the bags, then they are placed into a sous vide machine to cook in water at around 130 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes to an hour. Basically, the machine is used to heat up water in a special container made for the sous vide machine. This cooks the burger patties that are placed in the hot water after they have been vacuum sealed.
Because the burger patties are cooked sous vide, they do not lose their moisture while they are cooking in the vacuum sealed bags. Basically, the burger patties are getting near cooked before they are finished off quickly by searing them for around 45 seconds on both sides on a grill. After cooking in the sous vide machine, then the patties are removed from the vacuum sealed bags and finished off on a grill with this method of searing.
It does still require a little cooking after the burgers are almost finished cooking, but it will keep the burger patties from drying out before they are cooked, during the cooking, and as long as possible before they are seared on the grill. It will make the burgers as juicy and moist as possible, since the patties will have less time to lose its juices as it would if they were fully cooked on a grill. The end result can be burgers that take even longer to dry out because of this.
This method with a few personal tweaks here and there can be used to ensure that your guests are getting the freshest burgers, that aren’t drying out in the time wait in between. The trick to this is to prep the burger patties by cooking them to almost finished by using sous vide, where they aren’t exposed to air too long, then sear them later so they don’t dry out.
Being able to take the nearly cooked vacuum sealed burger patties and do what you want with them, without them drying out, is a huge benefit. It allows a lot of versatility after the vacuum sealed burger patties are cooked sous vide.
Use Food Wrapping Paper With A Disposable Food Container
If you just have to have those burgers fully cooked beforehand, and they have a long waiting period before they are served, then food wrapping paper could help to keep those burger patties from drying out. This is exactly what restaurants do for their burgers to keep the moisture in the burgers for their take-out orders. After the burgers are fully made, then they are wrapped in food wrapping paper, then stored in a take-out box for sandwiches. The take-out box is just simply a disposable styrofoam container to hold the food in it. It allows the sandwich to be kept in a more enclosed space.
Wrapping the burgers up and then placing them in the disposable food container can keep the burgers moist for quite awhile. The downside to using this method however, is the burgers can end up soggy over time if they are really juicy; or they could lose heat, meaning that you would be serving cold burgers if the waiting time in between, before they are served, is just too long.
Use A Hot Holding Cambro
A hold holding cambro can keep cooked burger patties from drying out, and keep the burgers warm for hours. The burger patties can be cooked and set in trays in the hot holding cambro, then the cambro can be sealed by closing and locking the doors.
The best way to use the cambros is to cook the burger patties, store them in the cambro, then store the vegetables that will go on the burgers separately in the cambro too to keep them cold. Using this method with a few tweaks here and there can help with catering orders that require a lot of precooking and mobility to other locations.
Of course a vehicle is needed that can hold the large cambros in them, but of course, if you are used to hot holding food, then you probably already have one. There are also smaller cambros that work too, if you need something a little more compact that can fit into any vehicle.
