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There are few more tasty and satisfying easy meals than a good beefburger, but as the definitive fast food they're also one of the most abused, stuffed full of gristle, mysterious discarded body parts, mechanically recovered meat and preservatives.

Making your own is a far more healthy option, and biting into a juicy, perfectly-cooked burger you know contains nothing but healthy meat is your reward.

Ingredients (two each for four people)
- Two pounds of beef mince. Most packaged minced beef is very lean and a little too finely ground for a perfect burger, you're better to ask your butcher (or the guys at the meat counter at the supermarket, if they can do it) to take a relatively fatty cut and grind it medium-fine for you. If you have to use lean mince, add a little fat (maybe a tablespoon or two) in the form of oil, or better still beef dripping. You need the fat to add moisture and bind the burger, and to stop it burning instead of browning.
- Half a tennis ball-sized onion
- Salt and pepper

Before you start preparation, let the beef sit (in a sealed container) at room temperature for a couple of hours. If it's fridge-cold, it'll be very hard to get the patties heated through (or cooked through if you insist on well-done, you savage) before the outside burns.

Spread out the beef in a thin layer on a cutting board or worktop, and grate the onion over it. Add a sprinkling of salt (about a tablespoon of sea salt should do it) and a good grind of black pepper. If the beef is lean, now is the time to add a drizzle of oil or dripping. Then knead it all together like dough, and divide it up into eight pieces.

Flatten each piece between your palms into a neat patty, working round and round and using your thumbs to push in the edges to stop them breaking up. Make them as thin as you can - they'll tend to shrink and thicken as they cook through the natural elasticity of the meat.

To cook your patties perfectly, you need either a grill or a grillpan and a good high heat. The ideal burger, IMHO, is well-browned on the outside with just a hint of pink on the inside - although if I'm eating somewhere with really good ingredients and feeling particularly carnivorous I'll go all the way to rare and bloody. However you prefer your meat done, it should be well-browned on the outside to bring out the wonderful flavour of the beef.

Get the heat up, give the grill or pan time to get to smoking, then slap on your patties. Don't be afraid to let them brown and stick a little, that's when the flavour is really coming out, although it's a delicate balance between brown-and-tasty and black-and-bitter. If you're going for well-done, you may need to bring the heat down a little at least at first to make sure they cook through before the outside burns.

If your beef has a lot of water in it (and most modern meat does, sadly), you'll see it sweating out and sitting on top of the patties - they'll also get very plump in the middle. In this case, press down firmly with a spatula or spoon until water stops coming out. You should only have to do this once in the cooking process.

If you're making cheeseburgers, put a couple of slices of good mature chedder on top just before you pull them off the grill (a couple of minutes before, if you're using a grillpan where there's not so much heat on top), just long enough to melt.

Once they're browned to perfection, sling your patties into a nice floury bap with some fried onions, a dash of ketchup or whatever you like, and wolf 'em down. That's the taste of a real burger, my friend.

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Labels: Beef, beefburger, Black pepper, burger, cheese, Cook, floury baps, Ground beef, Meat, real food, Sea salt