Smashed potatoes - or as we call them in my house, “Pac-Man potatoes” - are one of the finest things one can do with a spud.
Hey, thanks for linking the recipe! I was casting around for an accompaniment for my barbecued ribs tonight, and these look perfect!
Sounds like we’re about the same - to be more clear, that’s why I said “just a bit of char” in individual spots, not charred all over. So very similar to your roasted option. Which AFAICT is right about the same amount that many “charred” options at restaurants using, enough differential to touch the same mental image as grill marks = superior even if the meat is just as perfectly done on a griddle.
Again, marketing.
IMHO, YMMV, etc.
In my experience, most smash burgers are not Oklahoma Smash Burgers. Eg, they don’t have the very thinly sliced caramelized onions that make it a thing.
Oklahoma onion burghers are a treat; if you like onions. Almost a 2nd type of smash burgers.
Louis’ Lunch of New Haven, CT, which has a solid claim to being the first restaurant in America to serve a ground beef patty on bread, serves a thick patty cooked medium in a vertical gas broiler. Toasted white bread, no condiments - just tomato, white onion, and an optional sharp cheddar cheese spread.
The burger;
The broilers;
The only way that helps, with any kind of burger patty, is that if you make the patty yourself you control the quality of the ground beef. For that matter, you can control it even more by buying premium rib steak and grinding it yourself!
Depending on what’s available in your local market, I find these extremes usually unnecessary for ordinary burgers. There’s a great supermarket near me that makes great quality preformed patties – fresh, not frozen, about half a pound each raw, with just enough fat to sizzle and smoke on the grill. The advantage of being preformed by machine is that they’re well compressed into a uniform shape and thickness and don’t fall apart.
Smash burgers are something else entirely and the nature of the recipe is that they have to be made from scratch. Not really my style. I much prefer my fresh preformed patties on the grill.
And now I want a gooey cheeseburger for breakfast 
Same here.
When I make a hamburger, I handle the meat just enough to make a hamburger patty – no more than that. And definitely don’t mix spices in since that takes much more squishing of the meat. The more you handle the meat, the more you squash out any air pockets and less dense sections. Those air pockets and less dense sections are what you need for the grease to congeal in.
My hamburgers tend to be about 1 to 1 1/8 inches thick. I cook them over medium heat in a pan with butter. When done, I put them on a towel to let them rest to let the juices gel. I then toast my hamburger bun and wash my cooking utensils (except for the pan which would be too hot). After at least five minutes, I assemble the hamburger.
That reminds me of a former roommate of mine, who insisted on making hamburger balls because they had the least surface area and would theoretically retain the most juice. He’d roll the ball around in the pan periodically for even cooking. They were definitely juicy, but also definitely awkward to eat once loaded onto a bun with fixings.
Here’s some fancy culinary metaphors, from Posh Nosh:
