Juicy Lucy Burgers with Chef Franklin Becker

Divya Gugnani: Hi! I'm Divya Gugnani, and we're here in the West Village, so let's go Behind the Burner and meet the chef.

Hi! We're here with Franklin Becker, Executive Chef, Franklin, what are you making for us?

Franklin Becker: I'm going to make my signature Juicy Lucy. It's a burger that's actually stuffed with Joe Widmer's Wisconsin Brick and Cheddar Cheese. So what I do is make the pocket in the center and position my meat into the mold and then from there I take a little bit of Joe's 6-year-old cheddar.

Divya Gugnani: Wow! Nicely edged, bright color.

Franklin Becker: And I put it in and I take a little bit of his brick which is a spread that's made with mixture of salad cream and we're going to take a little piece of cheddar.

Divya Gugnani: Pop it off.

Franklin Becker: Pop it off and then I'm going to take the rest of my meat, I'm just going to flatten it out.

Divya Gugnani: So that's 7 ounces for the total burger honey?

Franklin Becker: 7 in total.

Divya Gugnani: Okay, and if you don't have a mold like this, what could you use? I mean, I was jus thinking, if you can't.

Franklin Becker: You can do a free form.

Divya Gugnani: A free form, okay.

Franklin Becker: Yeah, you can do a free form, you can create a little pocket and then from there, I just pop it out of the mold and I just round it off. I'm going to season with a little bit of salt. So what I'm going to do first is I'm going to make sure that my grill is nicely oiled because you want to make sure that --

Divya Gugnani: It doesn't stick.

Franklin Becker: -- the burger is not going to stick.

Divya Gugnani: How long do you like to cook your burgers?

Franklin Becker: It depends, generally speaking, if the burger is taken fresh like this one was, then it's going to be --

Divya Gugnani: Right, and it's at room temperature.

Franklin Becker: It's at room temperature, but I'm going to do roughly 2-3 minutes on each side and I'm going end up with a medium. I'm going to just finish it in the oven for about a minute. It's funny, but a burger actually works better on the grill when it's out of the refrigerator, it's another tip for you, okay, because the meat --

Divya Gugnani: Holds together better?

Franklin Becker: Yeah, it holds together a little bit better, it's always a little bit --

Divya Gugnani: It's settled, so when it's a little bit --

Franklin Becker: It doesn't melt out as fast, it's always a little bit better to take it out of the refrigerated state. At this point, I've got beautiful grill marks.

Divya Gugnani: Look at that 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock process.

Franklin Becker: So I'm just going to stick it right into the oven and what I want to do is I want to actually slide this towards the rear. So we're going to put a little bit of Dijon mustard right up top of the burger and this is through the last one minute of cooking.

Divya Gugnani: So you wait to the end for the Dijon mustard, because it's got sugars in it and you don't want it to overcome.

Franklin Becker: Correct.

Divya Gugnani: So it's like give it that one minute rear end, you're ready to rock. Yes, it's delicious, so cheesy, so juicy, so tender, it's really heavenly. So here we have it, this is the Juicy Lucy, cooked to perfection.

Chef Franklin Becker served off his culinary secret of using Joe Widmer's Aged Brick Spread and Wisconsin Cheddar Cheese in its signature Juicy Lucy Burger. Behind the Burner viewers can enjoy this exclusive opportunity to purchase these cheeses.

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