Michael Barrett 
Salt encrusted burger with brie
A friend of mine told me about a technique he had heard of for cooking hamburgers. The basic idea is that you cook your burger on a bed of kosher salt to create a salty crust on the outside of the meat.
I thought this sounded like something I should try, so one day for lunch I gave it a shot.
Usually when I make burgers I try to get ground beef that has about 15% – 20% fat and I shape it into 4 ounce patties.
I use my digital kitchen scale and a steel bowl to measure out four ounces of meat, add a pinch of salt and a grid of pepper, and the shape the burger.
Mise en place, Beer in place
This time around I didn’t season the meat very much, because I knew that I would be cooking on top of a pile of salt, so added just a pinch. For a regular non-salt-encrusted burger, I season each burger pretty liberally.
Too much salt
mmmm. salty.
I grossly over estimated how much salt I’d need to do this. As you can see in the photo on the left, I have a hefty pile of kosher salt in the pan. This produced a really nice crust, but it was too salty (still tasty, but overkill). The next time I try this I’ll use about a quarter of the salt.
I put the salt right into a dry pan without oil. I never oil a pan to fry a burger. Ground beef has plenty of fat on its own and if you are patient and let a nice crust develop the burger will release from the pan very easily. Just let the meat cook over medium-high heat for about 4 minutes on the first side and you’ll get a nice brown crust. The second side will only need 2-3 minutes because by this point the beef is no longer cold and doesn’t require as much time to brown.
Crusty burgers
The salt basically melts into and embeds itself into the crust on the meat, giving you a nice salty crunch with each bite.
I’ve been using english muffins as burger buns for a while now. They’re just the rights size to hold a four ounce burger, they have a nice crunch and texture, and they hold up better under all the juicy goodness (they don’t turn to mush and fall apart like regular store-bought buns).