Skip Salt And Pepper: Add A Packet Of This Seasoning To Ground Beef For Delicious Burgers

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Aside from the fact that burgers are endlessly customizable in terms of toppings, you can change up what you put into the beef as well. For example, if you wanted a touch of sweet heat, you could actually add hot honey into your ground beef mix. Or some people fold the ground meat over pieces of cheese, in what's known, at least in Minnesota, as a Juicy Lucy. However, if you wanted to keep the flavor profile roughly the same as a classic burger, just with more savoriness (and a hint of sweetness), you could incorporate a packet of onion soup mix, and you wouldn't even need any extra salt or pepper. There are plenty of brands available, but Lipton's is popular for a reason, and is widely available at stores like Walmart.

Onion soup mix will give your burgers more depth of flavor than just ground beef seasoned with salt and pepper because it tends to include ingredients that are full of umami; in some cases, that might be straight-up MSG, a much maligned flavor enhancer that was the target of Asian racism starting in the 1960s. But MSG is perfectly safe, and more than that, it upgrades pretty much everything it goes in, giving it a meatier, richer taste, which, when it comes to burgers, sounds like exactly something you'd want.

Also, classic onion soup mix is already quite heavy on the sodium, with salt typically ranking near the top of the ingredient list. You can forgo adding any more, which, if you often forget to season your burgers (it happens), means this is the right hack for you.

Using onion soup mix in your ground beef before you form it into burger patties is an easy and inexpensive way to get your next cheeseburger (and meatloaf, for that matter) to sing; it's also shelf-stable, so you can keep it in your pantry for a year or so and always have some on hand. However, you don't want to overdo it on the onion soup packets. A good ratio is a single packet per two pounds of beef, so if you're only mixing a pound, you'll want to sprinkle in only half of the mix. This should keep it so that onion isn't the only thing you taste when you bite into the burger, but there's still enough so that those rich umami flavors can permeate throughout. And no, you still won't need salt or pepper.

It can also help to add a bit of water or beef broth before you knead the onion soup mix through. Three to four tablespoons should do it if you're using two pounds of beef, and again, halve that amount if you're only cooking up one. The water "activates" the soup mix, hydrating the dry ingredients, which are powdered concentrates. This will keep the burger moist, rather than having the soup mix suck all the juiciness out of the meat. Just be sure to incorporate the water until it is no longer powdery and not much more; you don't want your burgers to fall apart in the skillet or on the grill.