Why don't preformed hamburger patties puff up like hand-formed ones do?

Cafe Society
1

We’ve all been taught the “thumb trick” with hand-formed burgers; you press a dimple into the center of the patty so it doesn’t become a meatball when cooked.

However, preformed patties don’t have the dimple, they’re a uniform thickness all the way across when raw, and they don’t puff up when cooked.

Why?

2

I ask because I was grilling some preformed burgers yesterday and I noticed they remained flat after cooking. They were thawed, but had been previously frozen, which may or may not be a factor? I wasn’t using a press, they were fresh out of the package, right onto the grill in a line over the downslope of coals, flipped only once, I wasn’t messing with them at all. Came off just as uniformly flat as they went on.

3

theyre already pressed …if you notice there are little rectangles on the patty …that means they tenderized them when they pressed them

4

As I understand it, meat tends to contract as it heats, and the dimple is a sort of way to pre-shape the meat so that when it inevitably shrinks, it does so into the shape you want- i.e. flat. Otherwise, it contracts in all directions and ends up more of a hockey puck than a flat patty.

From what I can tell, the pre-formed ones typically have a few things going on that home-formed ones don’t.

  • One, they’re considerably more “worked”, which tends to change the texture and shrinking characteristics of ground meat.
  • Two, they typically have some salt added, which also changes the texture and shrinking characteristics.
  • Three, pre-formed ones are typically fairly thin, so they don’t really shrink in the same ways.
  • Four, if they’re cooked from frozen, that’ll minimize the shrinkage, as they’re both thin and cold, so while the outside is cooked, the inside isn’t hot enough to actually shrink until they’re actually cooked.
5

I’ve cooked burgers many times in my life, but I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

6

Preformed patties can be bought frozen or fresh.

I think handformed ones have more airspace. Yeah they shrink some and puff a bit but that’s what makes them home-made.

I do not buy preformed. I don’t trust what may be added. It’s a pain when we have to hand do them. (So many)
Weighing the blob of meat before hand forming helps with even cooking over all.

We get all perfectly clean hands on deck. It goes pretty quickly.

7

I was never taught the “thumb trick”, although i saw it referenced in a YouTube video last week. My hand formed burgers shrink some, but they don’t really get fatter than they started. They just get smaller side-to-side.

The preformed ones shrink, too, but they start so thin that they remain much wider than they are tall.

8

Yeah, this. You form patties. You cook them. They shrink, they don’t puff up. They don’t turn into meatballs. They start out as discs, they stay disks.

Maybe there’s some “we assume everybody does this” step that some of us are oblivious to that explains why you other folks’ burgers turn into meatballs if you don’t stab them with your thumb?

:confused: