What's The 5-6-7 Rule For Cooking Hamburgers?
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For each big mistake everyone makes when cooking burgers, it seems as though there are twice as many hacks, tips, and secret techniques for getting them right every time. You can cook your burgers on a flat surface for maximum moisture like celebrity chef Bobby Flay. You can let your burgers rest without pressing for a similarly juicy effect. And, when all else fails, you can imbue those same burgers with extra fat via none other than a bit of butter. Internal temperature, however, is a different story.
The 5-6-7 rule for cooking hamburgers posits that a five-minute cook time on each side will produce rare burgers, six minutes will get you to medium, and seven makes 'em well done. This is, of course, deeply flawed. Five minutes over high heat, for example, will net a different doneness than that same amount of time on a lower setting. Likewise, there's a big difference in a live fire preparation versus burgers sizzled in a heavy cast iron pan on the stove. That is to say nothing of the disparate ground beef patty thickness found in households all across America. So, while you might be able to reach something close to the 5-6-7 rule if you make your burgers the exact same way every time, there is a more effective way for gauging their temperature.
Time and temperature measures you can take to the burger bank
The most accurate way to determine a burger's core temperature, and thus what we typically refer to as its "doneness," is with a meat thermometer. A rare burger should hover around 120-125 degrees Fahrenheit. Medium clocks in at 140-145 degrees Fahrenheit. And well done starts at 160 degrees Fahrenheit, which is, incidentally, the USDA's recommended minimum for food safety.
But wait; are restaurants taking the temperature of each burger they send out of the kitchen? Not necessarily, because they are, as noted above, making their burgers the exact same way, every time. That consistency is almost as good as having a crystal (meat) ball. If you can recreate a similarly predictable formula at home, go ahead and skip the extra gear. But if you want to give your burgers a little more room for size and heat source variation, ThermoWorks' ThermoPop2 takes up a negligible amount of utensil drawer space, and you can use it to gauge your other proteins, too.