Grilled burgers are never good. There. I said it.
Don't get me wrong—they're absolutely fun to make in the summer months. I love tossing thin, hand-formed patties on the grill with a mess of vegetables, hot dogs, and sauced-up chicken wings.
But those burgers on the grill are in no way great burgers. Too often they're dry and overly charred, and any trace of beefy flavor has been replaced by what can only be described as "grill." (Or worse, if you happen to end up at a cookout with someone who uses lighter fluid on their charcoal.)
This isn't anybody's fault per se—it's an inherent problem with that grill. The issue with cooking burgers atop the grates of a blazing charcoal grill is that burgers are meant to be cooked in their own fat. With a grill, all of those precious, fatty juices drip down to the fire below, causing the flareups that create that horrible, burnt crust. Got a burger with a higher fat content? Get ready for bigger flareups.
Luckily, we're in the business of solutions here at Epicurious. And as with so many other cooking conundrums, the answer lies in a cast iron skillet.
Yes, what you're looking at in that photo is a cast iron skillet set right on a grill. Yes, those are burgers in that skillet. And yes, this is our solution.
Cast iron works on the grill just like it does on your kitchen's stovetop: Place it directly on your grill's grates and let it get ripping hot. Pour a tablespoon or two of a neutral oil into the skillet and wait until it starts smoking. Then place your patties in the skillet—make sure things don't get too crowded—and step away from the grill and let your burgers cook, covering the grill (with the top vent open) for a minute or two during the process to let the patties pick up some smokiness.
Soon your burgers will be cooking away in all of their own juices.
Will there be flare-ups? No.
Will there be blackened edges to the burgers? No.
Will there be juicy, smoky burgers with that idyllic, rich brown crust we all chase after? Yes.
