For The Juiciest Burgers Of Your Life, Add This Old-School Ingredient To Your Ground Beef

More than just flavor, good food is about texture, too. So, it goes without saying that having a succulent mouthful is necessary for a satisfying burger. Aside from opting for the best type of beef for juicier burgers, you can also add a mouthwatering touch to your ground beef with an old-school ingredient: grated potatoes. This reliable, potassium-packed crop is rich in starch, containing up to 20%. Starch is often added to meat products, which can elevate juiciness and enhance texture by making the meat more satisfying to chew. This makes potatoes a worthy alternative to breadcrumbs since they generate, retain, and lock in moisture. Consequently, they can help you achieve a richer burger (sans the added fat content), so even leaner beef can be made juicy. 

The potato acts as a binder without introducing any additional flavor, so this mix-in that leads to an all-around better burger won't detract from your final patties. Considering how expensive beef is in the U.S., creating patties with grated potatoes can even be economically appealing. This may be why you see recipes from WWII doing the same thing: Using potatoes with beef to create a more generous serving of food in order to stretch meals. 

The base of juicy burgers starts with ground beef. Ground chuck promises succulence, as it typically comes with 20% fat, but you can let potatoes do their job by using leaner options, like ground sirloin or round, while still yielding a juicy patty. For the potatoes, the russet variety is a wise choice, as it's known for its high starch content. You can get rid of the skin since there's no use for that here; you want to grate the interior to add to the ground beef. You'll need at least a cup of grated potatoes for every pound of meat. Introduce your favorite herbs and spices, but feel free to go for a more exciting route by using unexpected seasonings for restaurant-quality burgers, like black truffle sea salt. Overall, it's easy and not much different from how you create your homemade all-beef patties.

However, since potatoes are rich in starch, the combo of beef and potatoes has the tendency to overcook compared to a pure beef patty, which can handle high heat. When you add potatoes, make sure to keep the temperature at a medium setting and watch closely to avoid burning. An oil with a high smoke point is helpful — like avocado and safflower oil — and can save your burgers from that unpleasant scenario without adding a distinct flavor to your patty. The result will be a tender and juicy patty with a slight crunch from the potatoes that might change how you make burgers at home forever.