Skip The Salt! For A Burger With Perfect Flavor, Add This To Your Ground Beef Instead

Burgers are the seemingly simple foodstuffs that actually lend themselves to all kinds of proprietary practices. Every backyard grill master has their favorite type of beef for juicy burgers, for example. Even knowing when to season the meat will affect your burger's outcome. And we're here to shake those seasonings up even further by swapping one typical flavor enhancer with another option that makes less frequent appearances on buns. The next time you whip up a batch of burgers, skip the salt and use soy sauce instead.

Soy sauce, as anyone who's ever added one dash too many to their dish has discovered, is plenty salty, so you aren't going to miss the zing you'd otherwise enjoy from the standard crystals. And, unlike salt alone, soy sauce also has heaps of umami that a lot of folks most readily associate with meatiness, making it a marvelous companion for, well, meat. It's also literally a liquid (which can't hurt, given a home cook's private battle against dry burgers), and its caramelly quality is an excellent match for those wonderfully flavorful grill marks that might grace your patties. It also, obviously, functions a little differently than everyday salt flakes, so you'll want to adjust your recipe accordingly.

A soy sauce adaptation might be an adjustment for those who prefer to salt their burgers after mixing ground beef and forming it into patties. Trying to use soy sauce the same way will not be effective, as the liquid will just run off or pool. It needs to be mixed in from the beginning to have a chance to distribute more evenly. When cooking burgers, you do not want to make the mistake of overmixing, either, so be sure to add soy sauce right away to minimize any extra agitation.

It may take a few batches to get your soy sauce swap just right. The popular Kikkoman brand soy sauce recommends two tablespoons of soy sauce per pound and a half of ground beef. Should you generally prefer things on the saltier side, you may want to scale up, or if you don't, then down. Like with the salt you might usually use, you should also take your extra toppings into consideration. If salty American cheese is compulsory, then you may want to be a little more conservative with the soy sauce. But if you're more of a fresh lettuce and tomato lover, you may have a greater need to front load extra flavor right into the meat. Just remember, as with most things in the salt department, it's always much easier to add a bit more later than to try to walk it back.