Adapted from Julia Child in Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1 — Jump to Recipe

French Hamburgers with mashed potatoes and purple sprouting broccoli

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My parents spent ten years living in Boston in the 1960’s. They moved there for grad school from the Detroit area, where they had grown up eating pretty typical midwestern working class food. When these crazy kids moved to the big city, they found themselves smack dab in the middle of a culinary renaissance. They cooked together for fun, experimenting with techniques and spice blends that they had never experienced in their childhood homes. I in turn grew up browsing through a wide variety of cookbooks by Florence Lin, Joyce Chen, Madhur Jaffrey, and of course Julia Child. My dad likes to tell me, very proudly, that they sought out Julia Child’s butcher to buy their meat and one time she was actually in the store at the same time they were there. Fun fact- on at least one occasion in the 1960’s Julia Child bought avocado green toilet paper.

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This recipe has been a family favorite for two generations. I usually don’t bother to follow a recipe. There are lots of different ways to finish a pan sauce, and sometimes I use mustard or a bit of tomato paste. Julia lists a number of options, including Snail Butter (which seems to involve shallots, garlic, and herbs but no actual snails, don’t worry.) For this blog I’m sticking pretty close to Julia’s Bifteck Hache a la Lyonnaise, which is on Page 301 of my 40th anniversary edition copy of Volume 1.

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Julia Child’s French Hamburgers

This is a great weeknight dinner. It’s quick and easy to throw together, and is great when you want to feel fancy without a lot of fussing around.

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Ingredients

For the meat:

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  • 1 lb ground beef, lean

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• • 2 Tablespoons butter

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• • 3/4c finely minced onion

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• • 1 egg

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• • thyme (and I also used parsley)

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• • pepper

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• • salt

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• • flour for dusting

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• • about 1 Tablespoon butter, and (not shown here but) 1 Tablespoon olive oil

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For the sauce:

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  • about 1/4c wine- what I had was red vermouth, but ideally you’ll have dry vermouth, sherry, madeira, or what my dad would call “cooking wine” which is just a bit of whatever bottle you have open while you’re cooking.

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• • about 1/2c beef stock

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• • more butter. 2-3 Tablespoons

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• • 1 or 2 Tablespoons of minced shallot, or onion which is what I had this time.

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Tools

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  • a big bowl

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• • a large saute pan or skillet

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• • an oven-safe dish

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• • sharp knife and cutting board

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Directions

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This can go pretty quickly if you need it to. You’re going to sweat your onions and cool them enough to handle, then make your burger mixture. The formed burgers are dusted with flour and pan fried, then held in a warm oven while you finish the sauce.

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Prep Ingredients:

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   1. Preheat your oven to 225F and put your oven-safe dish in to warm up.

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1. 1. Peel and mince your onion, and then sweat it with the two Tablespoons of butter in the pan you are going to use to cook the burgers. Sweating the onion means that your pan is on medium-low, and you are cooking the onion very slowly so that it gets sweet and translucent, but does not start to brown. Pull them off the heat when they are done, and let them cool down enough that they won’t cook the egg on contact.

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1. 1. Put the beef, egg, herbs, salt, pepper, and onions in your big bowl and mix them thoroughly together with your hands. Julia adds an additional 2 Tablespoons of soft butter, or suet, marrow, or fresh pork fat at this step, including what tagged along with the onions. Interestingly, she does this after calling for lean ground beef. Most of the time I have 85% beef, so I don’t bother adding any more fat back. You do you.

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1. 1. Spread some flour on a plate. Form four to six burgers, and dredge them in flour on both sides. You can hold here for a little while if you want to get some side dishes going. I’m a big fan of mashed potatoes with this one.

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Cook the Burgers:

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   1. Heat the pan over medium high, and add the oil and butter. You want to wait until the water cooks out of the butter before you add the burgers, because that is how you know that the pan temperature is higher than 212F, the boiling point of water. The bubbles get big and spattery and then they subside, like the picture. The lillte brown bits are onions from sweating them earlier.

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1. 1. Put the flour-dredged burgers in the pan. This is about as crowded as you can get away with. Cook them until they are well browned, and then flip them over. Moderate your heat if they are going too fast, you do not want the butter and flour to burn.

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1. 1. Watch the flour that is floating in the oil next to the burgers. Whatever color it is is the same color as the bottom of your burger. When your flour looks brown, flip your burgers and brown the other side.

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1. 1. When your burgers are nice and brown, remove them to the plate in the oven. They will keep cooking in there, so if your pan was too hot and you feel like they might be under-done, just let them rest in the oven for a bit longer.

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Make your Pan Sauce:

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What I’m doing here is a little bit off-script, but here we go

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   1. Pour off most of the oil left in your pan, but keep all the little browned meaty bits.

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1. 1. I’ve put in a bit of butter and my minced onion that I really wish was shallot. I’ll soften those up, and then add my stock and wine.

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1. 1. Boil the liquid while scraping every last bit of goodness off the pan and into the sauce. It should thicken up nicely from the flour on the burgers.

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1. 1. When it is thick, pull it off the heat and let it calm down for a minute, then swirl that last couple of Tablespoons of butter into the sauce, half a tablespoon at a time, and hope it doesn’t break.

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1. 1. You can spoon this over the burgers, or you can pull the burgers back out of the oven and slip them into the pan to coat with sauce. Garnishing with some fresh parsley is nice.

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To Serve

This is really good with mashed potatoes, egg noodles, or anything else you think might be delicious with that nice pan sauce.

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Did you try it?

Let us know what you think! We’d love to see pictures and hear about your results.

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