Do any of you use a hamburger cover?

GadgetGuy

GadgetGuy

(Formerly Shermie)
Joined
21 Aug 2014
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Hamburger Cover..jpg


I just got this from Amazon.com.
I was so tired of waiting too long for the cheese to melt on a burger and having it overcooked and dry by the time that the cheese had melted!
This cover helps trap in some of the needed heat to melt the cheese on the burger nicely!! :wink:
 
Yes, all the time. But I don't have a fancy one like that. I just put an old steel bowl or flipped over pan on top of them. Yours look like it would be easier to grab when it's hot. I'm pretty dexterous with a pair of tongs, but sometimes those bowls end up air borne
 
The little knob on top of it helps keep my hands away from the hot metal, thus preventing burns.
But I'm going to use a potholder anyway, for extra added protection from burns! :wink:
 
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When you're cooking on a grill or griddle, you place this over your burger (or anything else) and it traps the rising heat and radiates it back onto the food. You can use this technique to speed up cooking or, as Shermie does, melt the cheese on burgers without having to leave the burger on the grill too long and have it dry out. Many people put processed cheese on their burgers, and it melts really quickly. But if you put a harder cheese like old cheddar on there, you're going to need to cover it to get it to melt properly. The alternative is to place the cheese on the burger too early and have the red juices run into the cheese.
 
LittleLilly said:
When you're cooking on a grill or griddle, you place this over your burger (or anything else) and it traps the rising heat and radiates it back onto the food. You can use this technique to speed up cooking or, as Shermie does, melt the cheese on burgers without having to leave the burger on the grill too long and have it dry out. Many people put processed cheese on their burgers, and it melts really quickly. But if you put a harder cheese like old cheddar on there, you're going to need to cover it to get it to melt properly. The alternative is to place the cheese on the burger too early and have the red juices run into the cheese.
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I would think that if you cover the burger from the start, that it might "boil" and not brown properly. :ohmy: :eek:
 
back in the day we would use a alloy plate cover to set eggs on a griddle ,these have the handle for ease of moving about ,you can also put your cover over the burger with the bun lid on it give it a bit of eat,and a bit of a glaze,saw a chap at a posh pop up burger bar do it...
 
Usually, the lid on my small cast iron skillet works, but it just takes too long to develop enough heat to melt the cheese. By that time, the burger is hard, tough and overcooked

The hamburger cover helps to centralize & concentrate enough heat directly in the vicinity of the burger to melt the cheese nicely. :wink:
 
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I'm not a cheese on a burger sort of chap,we do hand pressed sirloin mince burgers at lunch at the restaurant and have found that if I make a rarebit up basically a mornay sauce enriched with egg yolk the fat of the cheese emulsifes,I allow this to cool place in piping bags and pipe on the burgers when cooked and straight under the salamander ,beautiful glaze,I don't bother reglazing our buns as they are brioche and get a glaze at baking,griddles in the uk seemed to die out professionally ,some cafes still use them and the home griddle pan revolution still plods on
 
I just tend to use the lid that comes with whatever frying pan I'm using. If that's not available I'll opt for a pizza pan. Depending on the size of my frying pan of course. I imagine that item is better suited for, say, a griddle or flat top.
 
Grilldes are relatively uncommon here in the UK and we tend to cook our burgers under the grill (or broiler as I think others call it). I can see how these would work well, particularly when it comes to melting the cheese. I prefer a slightly browned burger though so I think I'd only ever use something like this as a means of keeping things warm until they are ready to serve.
 
I think something like this is more meant for restaurants, where they are cooking on a large, open, metal griddle. In fact when I worked at A&W we had a couple of these to do exactly what you described when cooking the burgers on their griddles. But for cooking at home, a regular lid that came with your pan should work just fine, unless you were trying to make some really tall stack of meat, like corned beef or something, smothered with cheese and sauteed onions.

Another thing you could also do with a taller lid like that is throw the bun on top of the sandwich (or hot dogs) to warm it up too - since the lid is tall enough to accommodate both - then just scoop under the burger with a spatula and flip it over on to the bun to finish it off.

Of course, this would also work well on something like a large open outdoor grill too, when you want to melt cheese over the grill and you're not cooking the burgers in a standard pan.

Some restaurants also have dedicated machines that burst the burgers or hot dogs with hot steam to quickly melt cheese on them and warm the buns.
 
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