Rude Food by Vir Sanghvi: Look who joined the patty

For years, great beef meant great burgers. But a new variation on the mince patty costs less, delivers on flavour and tastes excellent with lamb

For most of us who live in India, getting an authentic hamburger is next to impossible. In most of the world, a hamburger is a minced beef patty in a bun. In India, for obvious reasons, you won’t find a good beef patty (even in the states where serving beef is legal). The fast-food chains have learned to get around this by improvising. McDonald’s tried a goat burger when it first launched, but the product was rejected by the market and it switched to chicken and vegetable alternatives. Burger King has had some success with a lamb patty, but it is not at all like the burger that the chain has made famous all over the world.

Smash burger patties at Veronica’s in Mumbai have a greater surface area, delivering a more complex crust.

There is much speculation about the formula used to constitute the beef mince in Shake Shack’s patties.

Joel Robuchon puts foie gras into the burgers he serves at his L’Atelier chain.

Regular cheeseburgers, such as the ones at In-N-Out in the US, have their own cult followings.

A smash burger is made by squashing a ball of mince on a griddle with a spatula or a hard press.

Hussain Shahzad, the chef at Hunger Inc. says that in India, it is far easier to make a smash burger with a coarse grind of meat (buffalo or goat).