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Wisconsin Butter Burger Recipe

Why It Works

  • Grinding your individual beef mix ensures a extra flavorful patty and might be executed in a meals processor or with a stand mixer if you do not have a meat grinder.
  • Mixing butter with the lean, tender sirloin steak boosts the burger mix’s richness.
  • Flavoring the butter with soy sauce provides umami depth.
  • Mixing lemon juice into the sautéed onions provides a shiny dimension to the butter-soaked burger.

At times, you end up trying down at a burger cooking in a pan, scorching in a pool of rendered fats, and considering, “You already know what this wants? An enormous pat of butter.” Proper? Or perhaps you’re not from Wisconsin.

Severe Eats / Qi Ai


I’m not from Wisconsin myself, so earlier than I got down to make butter burgers, I known as my buddy Josh Modell in Milwaukee for recommendation. “Butter burgers are actually good, however, I’ll admit, they’re additionally sort of gross,” says Modell, a author and editor who ran The Onion’s editorial operations in Chicago earlier than shifting again to his residence state of Wisconsin in 2021. “Like, a burger is already fatty and scrumptious and fantastic. You take a look at the pool of butter on the backside of the plate and suppose, ‘Ought to I actually be doing this to myself?’”

Then once more, Modell identified, many people are okay with butter-soaked beef in a special context—once we exit for steaks. (Daniel Gritzer had the same realization.) “I’ll go to the 5 O’Clock,” a Milwaukee establishment since 1946, “and I know that the ‘juices’ on the backside of my plate are principally butter,” Modell says. “I’ll sop them up with out fascinated by it… However there’s one thing completely different about that. It looks like extra of an occasion.”

Severe Eats / Qi Ai


Why Your Burger Actually Does Want Butter

Wisconsin butter burgers vary from event-worthy to on a regular basis. Culver’s, a Sauk Metropolis, Wisconsin–based mostly quick meals chain that’s taking Higher Midwestern tradition nationwide, serves a signature “ButterBurger” distinguished by a “lightly” buttered bun. Pfft. The butter burger that will get meals writers excited and retains cardiologists up at evening is the home specialty at Solly’s in Milwaukee, the place a four-ounce sirloin patty comes topped with stewed onions and a beneficiant layer (a tablespoon or two) of sentimental, spreadable Badger State gold. “The butter is an entire additional ingredient,” Modell says. That’s the burger I wished to make.

Severe Eats / Qi Ai


After I realized that the butter burger at Solly’s is made with all sirloin beef reasonably than chuck or a combo, the idea began to make extra sense to me. There’s a logic to it. Sirloin is extremely tender and extremely lean. By itself, it makes bland, dry burgers, however in blends, it’s a mild complement to fattier, extra flavorful, and more durable cuts of beef. As an alternative of mixing sirloin with the likes of oxtail and brisket, as in Kenji’s Blue Label Burger Blend, the cooks at Solly’s are dousing the lean minimize with a supplementary fats that’s ample in Wisconsin, for a burger that’s remarkably tender and remarkably juicy. And since sirloin doesn’t have a powerful taste of its personal, the candy style of butter comes by way of.

Make Your Personal Butter Burger Mix

Whereas many butter burgers are merely topped with butter, I had a hunch that the burger could possibly be even higher if I integrated butter into the burger, infusing fats and taste into each chew. Simply as essentially the most scrumptious meals is seasoned in layers, not simply on the finish, I believed the perfect butter burger could be one which begins with butter, lubricating that lean sirloin from the second it hits the pan.

Severe Eats / Qi Ai


So, I made a decision to grind my very own beef. I used a stand mixer with a grinding attachment. You should use a standalone meat grinder or a food processor. What issues most is protecting all the things refrigerator-cold till you’re able to cook dinner, so the fats disperses evenly all through the bottom beef and also you don’t find yourself with a melty, slippery mess. Grind the meat with butter in batches, so it doesn’t overheat, and deal with it as little as attainable. The direct fats infusion takes additional work, however the result’s a wealthy, tender burger patty. Some folks describe wagyu fats as “buttery.” Utilizing precise butter within the grind gave me one thing approximating that have for a fraction of the associated fee.

Nonetheless, I missed the partially melted butter topping that’s a trademark of the Solly’s expertise, so I ended up splitting the stick, grinding half into the patties and reserving half for topping the burgers and cooking the “stewed” onions, one other Solly’s custom.

Add the Savory Compound Butter to Effectively, All the pieces

Even with butter all through, the burger was nonetheless lacking one thing, I felt. There’s nothing unsuitable with a easy burger, however, bear in mind, I wished this one to really feel extra-special. After a number of extra buttery bites, it got here to me. 

Severe Eats / Qi Ai


See, there’s one other butter burger I really like—extra precisely, a margarine burger. And it isn’t from Wisconsin. It comes from Lindey’s Touchdown West Bayburgers, a trailer outdoors Lindey’s Prime Steak House in Seeley Lake, Montana, the place I used to cease for lunch on my days off from a visitor ranch about 20 minutes away. It’s topped with the restaurant’s regionally well-known “finger-lickin’ sauce.” The recipe for the sauce is a home secret, secure even from small-town gossip (consider me, I’ve tried), however the house owners admit that the bottom is Blue Bonnet margarine, and it’s rumored that one other key ingredient is soy sauce. There’s extra to it, I do know, however these two flavors conjure up the Bayburger fairly nicely from right here in Kansas Metropolis.

This isn’t a margarine burger, however I paid tribute to Lindey’s with a easy soy butter used all through this recipe—within the grind, to cook dinner the onions, and on high of every burger. A spritz of lemon juice on the onions completes the soy, butter, and lemon taste trifecta (salt, fats, acid, umami…) for a predictably scrumptious consequence. This isn’t the butter burger you’d get at Solly’s or Culver’s. With the additional effort and taste, it’s a butter burger that looks like an occasion

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