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Hamburg Steak
Chop raw lean beef quite fine, season with salt, pepper and a little onion juice. Make it into small flat cakes and pan broil in a hot frying pan. Serve very hot with butter or Maitre d'Hotel Sauce. Make the proportions about one-fourth fat to three-fourths lean meat. The seasoning for this is in the proportion of one teaspoon of salt, one-fourth teaspoon pepper and a few drops of onion juice for one pint of meat after it is chopped. Allow 1/4 pound raw beef to a serving.
A plain pan-broiled chopped steak from the era before the supermarket meat case, when the cook specified the lean-to-fat ratio because the butcher ground it to order. The instructions are complete; only the units and a few assumptions need translating.
- A pint of chopped meatThe seasoning is given by volume, not weight. A pint of freshly chopped raw beef weighs roughly a pound, so the working ratio is 1 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper per pound.
- One-fourth fatTwenty-five percent fat sits at the fatty end of the usual retail range: 80/20 is common, leaner 90/10 is widely stocked, and plain 'regular' ground beef can run fattier still. Ask for chuck ground coarse, or add a little beef fat, or the cakes will be dry and crumbly.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on the fine side of a box grater and press the pulp through a sieve, or squeeze it in a cloth. A few drops is literal; the point is background savour, not onion flavour.
- Pan broilThis means a heavy dry pan, iron for preference, brought to a real heat with no added fat. The fat in the meat renders out and does the work. Pour it off between batches if it starts to smoke.
- DonenessChopped beef is not a whole steak. Current guidance is 160F internal for ground meat, since grinding distributes surface bacteria throughout. Cakes about 3/4 inch thick will get there in roughly four minutes a side over good heat.
- Maitre d'Hotel SauceIn practice this is a compound butter, not a poured sauce: softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, chilled, then sliced onto the hot cakes so it melts down over them.
- YieldAt 1/4 pound raw beef per serving, a pound of meat gives four cakes.