The Unlikely Kitchen Tool Culver's Used To Make The First ButterBurgers

There are so many burger-making tips, tricks, and hacks in circulation that it's easy to feel like you've seen it all. You might know the best type of beef for juicer burgers, how to avoid overmixing beef to prevent toughness, and the best way to form the perfect patties. But, if you still wonder how to portion burgers, borrow a technique from Culver's, the fast food chain known for its signature custard and ButterBurgers. Culver's, which originated in Wisconsin in 1984, once used an ice cream scoop to make its famed ButterBurgers.

The tool typically reserved for doling out frozen treats happened to create ideal allotments of meat, according to the company's website. Culver's would scoop, then press the resulting balls into patties right on the grill, where they would be flattened to evenly cook. In addition to easier measuring, using an ice cream scoop is one way to prove you're working with the fresh beef that Culver's still promises today. We've all struggled to crack a pint of extra-frozen Ben & Jerry's, so it's hard to imagine an ice cream scoop faring much better against a block of frozen beef.

The biggest barrier to entry is how sticky ground beef can be. All that mince loves clinging to surfaces, so introducing one more is just another thing to scrape and eventually clean. Cold meat is easier to work with in this regard, if you can refrigerate it again after mixing. Dunking the scoop in a dedicated bowl of water after each use also deflects some of that tackiness. Just make sure said bowl is for in-between meat scoops only to prevent cross-contamination.

An ice cream scoop might not seem necessary when your hands are already dirty from combining the meat and you just need to form patties, but it's a great tool for crafting top-notch smashburgers. These require that you form the meat into a ball before the titular smash, and an ice cream scoop helps you get them all the same size every time. This also streamlines your cooking time. Just make sure you have another ice cream scoop when it's time for dessert.