- Is there anything more American than burgers and fries?

We all love them, which is why I'm in Philadelphia in search of the holy grail: the ultimate burger grind and the best way to cook french fries.

In my kitchen, I'll take the challenge to build a better burger with two of my favorites.

First, Spanish burgers topped with paprika sauce and roasted peppers and melted cheese.

And then turkey burgers, a healthier burger that's made juicy with the addition of sautéed spinach and onion.

We'll see how they make fries at a top restaurant and then we'll try my version, baked, not fried, but I think, just as delicious.

Today it's burgers and fries.

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- Burgers are no longer just drive-in fare.

Even the Swankiest restaurants serve them now, each with their own perfect secret blend of meat.

The great thing is you can buy premium ground meat mixes mail order from the same butchers who deliver to top restaurants.

Or you can make your own burger blend by going to a reputable butcher like Esposito's here in Philadelphia, where the butcher will grind the meat fresh for you.

That way, you know what you're serving your family.

Esposito's on 9th street in the Italian market is a Philadelphia institution.

It's been here for 100 years.

Butcher Jordan Morinich has been working here for almost 30 of them.

Hi.

- Hi.

- Can you help me?

I want a-- - Are you next?

- Yes.

- Okay, then I can help you.

- I wanna buy some meat to grind up to make the best burger.

What do you recommend to make the best burger?

- Probably 80-20.

- [Sara] What does that mean?

- What does that mean?

80-20 means it's 80% lean 20% fat.

- Now why do you need that mix?

- Well, the leanness of the meat, if it's too lean, you're just gonna have beef with no flavor.

The fat gives you a little bit of juice in it, so if you had a meat that had no fat whatsoever, it's gonna be a dry burger.

- But the lean has to be flavorful, right?

- Oh yeah, most definitely.

You really have many things to choose from.

- Okay, well, show me if you want in the lean, flavorful category.

- Lean, flavorful... You're actually standing right in front of one of the leaner cuts which is a sirloin cube.

- Okay.

- That's a very lean meat-- - Steak tips, okay.

- Now across the top here, the short rib, the brisket, and the chuck roll are amongst your fatter ones.

- Is there one cut of meat that is 80-20 that you could just go for without thinking about it?

- Basically the chuck cubes.

- Like with this guy right here?

- Across, yeah, on the top shelf here, this is the big chuck roll.

Now we cut it up into smaller cubes which is right over here, the good old-fashioned chuck cubes.

It's got the fat marbled through already.

It's already in there so you don't have to actually mix anything to it.

The fat is all there.

Right through the grinder.

And again, when you grind it, there's a difference, too.

- I think I'm gonna make my choice.

Do you have some boneless short ribs?

- Yes, we do.

That's got a good layer of fat in there already.

- Look at all that marbleing.

- Marbled through.

- So I wanna do a mix of that for my fat and let's go for the steak tips for the lean.

- Very good choice.

And how much were you looking for?

- About two pounds.

- About two pounds.

It's gonna be slightly over.

- That's okay, that's okay.

But I wanna come see how you grind it.

- Sure, no problem.

I got a room right back here.

Did you wanna grind up the ones of your choice?

- I don't know.

Geez, that's the next discussion.

- Questions you have to figure out.

We're here, come on back here.

I'll show it to you.

All right, let's grind some meat.

I can smell them burgers already.

- That is fast.

- Yes, it is.

- Yikes.

I can see all the different colors.

- Right, now you see, after the first grind, it looks a little bit fatty here, and a little bit leaner here 'cause there were two different cuts of meat.

So therefore, if we'd put it in a second time, we can mix it and blend it and it'll make a nicer patty at the end.

- Well, also, if it's really coarse, it doesn't hold together, does it?

- Correct.

So twice will help to bind it a little bit better.

But you don't really want to mix it more than twice 'cause then it'll start to get rubbery and it won't be as nice.

- Why, 'cause it's just really fine it gets too tight and packed.

- It'll just be mush-mush.

- Okay, okay.

- My perfectly ground 80-20 burger blend is going to be the secret weapon in my super delicious Spanish burger coming up.

Welcome to Sara's Weeknight Meals.

I'm Sara Moulton and tonight is burger night.

I'm gonna use my special burger mix that I picked up from the butcher.

And I'm gonna be making my favorite Spanish burgers.

Who knows if they make 'em in Spain but I don't care.

I'm just putting all my favorite Spanish ingredients into the burger.

So we're gonna start with a little bit of onion that I've already cooked here.

There's a half an onion chopped.

And then right here I've got a clove of minced garlic because it adds a moisture.

Now I'm using, as you know, my wonderful special burger beef mix.

But if I was using pork or I was using turkey, those are very lean meats, and you need the vegetables inside of the burger to give it that moistness.

And now I am going to cool it because we don't wanna add hot onions to raw beef.

So let this cool while we get some onion cooking for the topping.

So half of the onion we chopped, let me add the meat in a minute, and the other half we slice.

Just a very quick.

I'm gonna use olive oil 'cause we're in the Mediterranean.

I love mayonnaise.

My husband thinks it's crazy that I put mayonnaise on meat.

You know, I'm just one of those people, but I just love it.

So we're gonna make special mayonnaise and here's what's special about it.

First, let me put it into bowl.

We only need about a cup.

You could use low-fat.

Don't use no-fat, that has no flavor.

And then a half teaspoon of smoked sweet Spanish paprika.

Great ingredient to use if you wanna add some smoke to a recipe, but you don't wanna add liquid smoke or any other kind of smoky ingredient.

This is a sneaky way to get in there.

About a half teaspoon.

So we just made the topping.

It wasn't that hard.

Paprika is what goes into chorizo that everybody loves so much.

It gives it that beautiful red color and a wonderful taste.

All right, so we got our topping.

Our onions are going.

I'm gonna get the rest of our topping, which is, we have Spanish olives.

You know them.

They're briny, they're tasty, they're really nice.

And, oh, before I do that, I'm gonna see if this is cool enough to get my burgers on.

Yes, it is.

Just wanted it to cool a little bit.

So I get my burgers in the pan.

Here we go.

I'm gonna mix this very gently by hand.

My impeccably clean hands, but these are the best tools, they really are.

And the point is that when you mix burgers, you put anything into them, and you shape them, you wanna work quickly.

And olive oil again 'cause we're in the Mediterranean.

So this is Spanish.

Okay, wlet me get this going.

And when you shape them, don't pack them.

If you pack them, what happens is all the juices come out.

It's like the protein compresses and just knocks out all the juices, and we don't want that to happen.

We want juicy, yummy burgers.

Here, let's just do this.

And I'm gonna sprinkle it with a little salt.

Let me, quick, rinse off my hands.

They're gonna get dirty again.

That's what happens when you're working with...

I get my soapy water in there, when you're working with meat.

I'm gonna just season the side that I'm gonna put in first.

I like to do that.

And then I'll season the other side right before I flip it.

Oops, I can see my onions are getting brown.

I'm gonna get to them in a second.

So I'm just going to stir my onions.

And I don't mind their getting brown.

I like them brown.

Oh, those are gorgeous, actually.

Nicely caramelized.

If you cook onions really fast over high heat, they will get crispy like this but yet, they'll hold their integrity.

So they'll be nice and crunchy inside.

Done with the onions.

And here we go.

Oops, I can see this is getting good and hot.

And in they go.

But one little thing I'll tell you, and this is more relevant for grilling than in a skillet, is if you want them not to buckle up in the middle, you put a thumb print.

And what happens is they naturally retract.

This will help them to stay level.

I mean, who cares anyway?

I don't mind if it buckles up but what the heck.

Okay.

So we gonna do about three minutes a side while I get the rest of the topping ready.

Now let me just rinse.

So, back to my wonderful Spanish olives.

Any Spanish olive will do, with pimientos, without pimientos, all fine.

We'll just gonna chop them a little bit 'cause this is our topping.

And we want about a third of a cup.

After you chop it, it reduces a bit.

Now we have these wonderful peppers.

These are piquillo peppers from Spain.

They're wonderfully sort of briny and have a little bit of heat to them.

I want about a half of cup, so here go.

I tasted them at the fancy food show and I thought "Wow, these are really great".

All right, we go down and flip my burgers but first I'm gonna season the second side.

Ah, nice sear.

I'm gonna toast my buns.

I've got some brioche buns.

You can use any bun you want.

I'll just do one 'cause it's me.

Now we're gonna need some cheese.

It would be terrific if I had some Spanish cheese.

There's this one that I love that I can never pronounce.

It's id-e-i-za-bel, which is smoky and creamy but not easy to get, so you can use either cheddar, or you could use Monterey Jack, or any cheese you like.

Make sure I'm not killing.

Oops, this happens very quickly.

Look at that beautiful color.

All right.

So, it's just about ready.

So, our topping on.

Gotta stir it up.

Ain't that beautiful looking?

Nothing like a red pepper, particularly the Spanish piquillos.

Now, put the cheese on top.

Put the lid on.

I'm gonna turn it off so it just sort of melts gently.

And in about a minute or two, these are gonna be ready to go.

And what's the perfect thing to serve with this?

Well, a really nice chilled beer, of course.

Burgers and beer.

Match made in heaven, or me, maybe a glass of Rioja.

But anyway, there you have it, my perfect Spanish burger.

The perfect burger demands the perfect fry.

Whether you call them pomme frites, chips or french fries, these fast food favorites have gone upscale in the big way.

And like burgers, there's a huge debate about which ones are the best.

Some say you'll find them at the Dandelion in Philadelphia.

I'm here to find out their secret.

Chef Robert Atkins is British.

But somehow we didn't always speak the same language.

- So I will use this gpod potato.

- I call that a russet.

- Russet or gpod.

- A gpod.

- Yeah, so what we do is I'm gonna cut them into basically like a large chip.

Nice, thick-cut chip.

- And the reason for a thick french fry is because?

- I just think this has a better flavor.

- This is your unique thing.

- It's our uniqueness as well, yeah.

So those, basically we just cut those.

And then those go, we leave them to soak overnight in the water.

- Oh, really?

- To get rid off-- - To get rid of the starch.

- You know we should have mentioned that the reason we're using the russet is because they're the highest-starch potato.

- That's right.

- Or the peapod?

- Yes, g-pods.

- Oh, g-pods, okay, whatever.

The potatoes are soaked overnight then get blanched in salted water to partially cook them.

- So, as you see, they break up a little bit-- - Oh, I see, so that's what you're looking for when you blanch them.

- So they're just like half-cooked.

- Okay.

The secret is they get cooked twice more.

First, to infuse them with a special flavor.

That's beef fat, huh?

- That's beef fat.

So this is ground beef fat.

- So you just put this in a pot?

- So this goes in a pot.

- That delicious beefy fat is rendered for three hours, strained, and then used to blanch the parboiled fries, or whatever you wanna call them.

- Chips, remember, it's chips here.

- Fries.

- Chips.

- Fries.

In beef fat, I love it.

- We call them chips in England.

- Okay, but we're not in England.

- This is little England, this restaurant.

- This - After five minutes simmering in beef fat, they go in a second fryer full of hot oil.

And they emerge golden and crispy.

Wow, these are the most beautiful fries I've ever seen.

- Nice beautiful chips, you wanna say.

- Fries, can I have some?

- Chips.

- Fries.

- Chips.

- Fries.

- Chips.

- Fries.

One thing we can agree on, these fries are absolutely delicious.

- It's pretty good, right?

- It's very hot and yummy.

- You cook pretty well for a Brit.

- Not bad, right?

- Good job.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Not bad at all.

But in your own kitchen, you don't need any fryer and the oil and the fat to make delicious fries.

I mean, chips, whatever.

My version is coming up next.

I'm using the right potato which is the Idaho potato.

Well, Idaho is the most famous of the russet.

Russet are high-starch potatoes and the reason we like them is they have a wonderful creamy texture.

And we're gonna cut these in about the third of an inch slices.

I'm leaving the skin on.

I scrubbed it.

And so for one potato, I'm gonna have about one tablespoon of olive oil, and a hefty pinch of salt.

And I like to toss them up in the bowl.

I mean you could do it on a sheet pan but it's sort of key to get the oil on every single potato.

You don't do it as well if you do it in a sheet pan.

I preheated the oven to 500 degrees.

And the way to keep them from sticking is one of my favorite things which is parchment paper.

It's so great it just makes the job easy.

You want them to be separated.

That way, they will get much browner.

I'm gonna put this in.

This will take about 15 minutes.

And then I'm gonna take them out, turn them over, then take another 5 to 10.

You just want to get them crispy on all sides.

The last bit of salt.

And they are as crispy and delicious as the restaurant version, but without the fat.

What makes beef burgers so delicious?

Fat, of course.

Now turkey burgers are a healthy alternative but they tend to have the texture of cardboard.

How do you get around that?

Vegetables are my secret.

Today I'm making turkey spinach burgers.

So I gotta get my onions going here.

I got my beautiful spinach.

We need about a half a cup of sautéed onions.

And if you only add one vegetable to give this moisture to turkey, let it be the onion.

When you sauté it, it just adds this wonderful depth of flavor and moisture.

We're gonna get it in there with a little bit of olive oil.

We are gonna use some fat even though this is our lean turkey burger.

Okay.

So medium low for about 10 minutes until it gets nice and golden.

A little stir, a little pinch of salt and pepper.

Okay.

I'm going to let that go for 10 minutes.

Now see that nice color?

That's what I'm looking for.

In goes the spinach.

We need five ounces.

And I'm gonna really crank up the heat here.

'Cause we wanna get this shrinking, cooking, welting fast without sweating and giving up too much liquid.

And it will do it.

You don't need any liquid to cook spinach.

I love spinach.

All right.

And I'm gonna add a little pinch of salt.

You want to flavor as you go, you don't wanna wait till the end.

Give this one more second.

You don't wanna add hot vegetables to ground meat because it's gonna heat up the inside before the burger cooks.

And we don't wanna set up a bad temperature situation for bacteria reasons.

So what I'm gonna do is quick-chill this.

Just throw it in the fridge until it comes, you know, gets pretty cool.

And then we can add the rest of the turkey ingredients.

Okay.

I'll work on my sauce while this cools off.

So the sauce is a really simple sauce.

It's part yogurt, part mayonnaise.

And we're using yogurt because we wanna keep it leaner.

You could use low-fat mayonnaise.

Don't use no-fat mayonnaise.

No-fat mayonnaise has no flavor.

Boring.

And you could do with all yogurt.

I like the Greek yogurt, it's fantastic.

So about a quarter cup of each.

And then we're gonna spike it up with some other ingredients.

And then these things called pepperoncini.

You find them in Greek salads.

And we're gonna chop two of these guys.

You need about two tablespoons.

You could add more.

I'm gonna add some of their juice, too.

You can remove the seeds, which I will do very quickly.

Now this sauce that I'm making is a wonderful sauce for all sorts of things.

It's great on sandwiches.

It'd be wonderful with sautéed shrimp.

I just like it 'cause I like that slight heat.

These aren't terribly hot but they give it a kick.

We're gonna move on to the garlic.

And just one clove.

Put some lemon juice, couple teaspoons, one to two.

I'm just gotta eyeball it here.

Let me get the rest of my ingredients.

We have a few other things to add to the turkey.

Now when you go to buy ground turkey in the supermarket, you can get white meat, you can get dark meat.

Obviously, white meat is the leanest of all of them.

Or you could get a mix.

And there's many different percentages of fat.

Normally, I wouldn't recommend going with a hundred percent white meat turkey ground 'cause it's very dry.

But with all these vegetables, the things I'm adding, you could do that if you really wanna go lean, lean, lean.

And then we're also gonna add to the turkey some oregano and some feta.

Let me just chop the oregano and then I know my spinach-onion mixture will be ready.

So oregano is a wonderful herb that's used in Greek cooking.

Another herb that would go nicely in here would be some rosemary.

And certainly thyme would be nice with turkey, too.

I'm gonna pick about two tablespoons of oregano.

Using a grill pan, you could do this on an outside grill, be great on an outside grill.

Okay.

And let me get my cooled mixture.

Yes, that is wonderfully cool.

Okay, all the turkey goes in.

I'm gonna move this down here.

Since we have feta going in, I'm not gonna add much salt, just a tiny bit, 'cause we all know this is three ounces of feta.

Feta is rather salty.

It's a wonderful goat or sheep's milk cheese.

I've never met a feta I didn't like.

So there goes my oregano and my feta and a little bit of salt.

And then I'm gonna mix this with my hands because that's really the best tool to mix any burger with.

But you don't wanna mix them too much because they will then be very dense.

We don't want it to be dense.

We want it to be, you know, light on the inside.

Doesn't it look beautiful?

I'm gonna shape these, too, and get them in.

That looks pretty good.

It's okay to have big chunks of feta.

They sort of melt.

And because we added all the vegetables, it seems that much more substantial.

So we better make sure that we don't turn it 'til it's ready to be turned.

People make mistake when they're cooking burgers.

of putting it into the pan and then noodging it, noodging it noodging it, noodging it.

I'm gonna have to hose off 'cause I'm gonna use my olive oil spray.

You can get this to put the oil in that don't have anything else in there.

It's just straight olive oil.

I'm gonna oil the second side while it's cooking.

All right, so now we'e gonna go with six minutes a side and we wanna cook it well done because it's turkey.

So let me get these guys off.

We got whole-wheat buns 'cause we're being healthy.

You lather it up on both sides with our delicious sauce.

And then, on goes our burger.

You can grill these buns if you want.

That would be nice.

You know, it would be great to serve this also on pita.

And that would be sort of in the whole theme.

You need big pitas for that.

I'm getting so excited.

Does that look like a lean, depressing burger?

I don't think so.

I'm gonna go down and have it.

So wow, I can not wait to dig in to this.

I mean, yikes.

Who doesn't love a burger?

And occasionally, isn't it nice to have a burger that's slightly healthier, that's slightly lower in calories like my turkey burger here?

Thank you for joining me.

I'm Sara Moulton.

I'll see you next time for more of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

- [Voiceover] Sara's Weeknight Meals continues online.

For recipes, helpful tips, messages and lots more, visit us on the web at saramoulton.com/weeknightmeals.

And go to our YouTube channel: Sara's Weeknight Meals TV.

Funding provided by: - [Voiceover] Family owned and Indiana grown, Maple Leaf Farms is a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

Providing a variety of duck products for home kitchens.

Maple Leaf Farms duck helps inspire culinary adventures everywhere.

Maple Leaf Farms.

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A recipe made for whatever the day brings.

Subaru, a proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

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