The Cooking Spray Tip That Will Help You Shape The Perfect Patties
Nothing beats the delicious aroma of ground meat sizzling to cooked perfection. Whether you are planning to grill up some top-notch lamb burgers for a backyard barbecue, or preparing meatballs to mix into an heirloom tomato sauce, knowing how to craft the perfect patty is certainly a skill that comes in handy. With Impossible Meat and Beyond Beef becoming increasingly popular, this is a talent that will benefit vegans and vegetarians alike.
Because shaping the perfect patty is such a universal skill, professional chefs have offered up their personal tips and tricks to make this experience easier for amateur home cooks. The founder of Huxtaburger, an Australian-based burger chain, Daniel Wilson, recommends using a food scale to ensure that all of your patties are identical in terms of size and weight (via Eat This, Not That). Meanwhile, celebrity chef Bobby Flay recommends using your thumb to make an indent in the middle of your burger patty to keep it from getting too thick in the center (via Today). While knowing how to master the size and shape of your beef patties is all well and good, how do you keep the ground meat from sticking to your hands? All it takes is a little bit of cooking spray.
Cooking spray helps prevent ground beef from clinging to your skin
Those who have never crafted a burger patty before probably think it's pretty simple. All you need to do is mold together some ground beef, right? How hard can it be? Well, if you have gone about this deceivingly frustrating process, you will know what makes it so tricky: Stubborn bits of meat are constantly sticking to your hands, making the shaping process more challenging than it should be.
Thankfully, there is one easy hack that can help solve all of your pesky patty problems. According to All Recipes, spraying a light layer of cooking spray over your hands will prevent the meat from adhering to your skin. It's as simple as that!
Bustle offers another, less sticky solution. One of the reasons that the meat tends to cling to your skin the way that it does is because of the heat emanating from your hands. Washing your hands in cold water beforehand will help remedy this issue.