Gordon Ramsay Vs. Guy Fieri: Whose Burger Is Better?
Guy Fieri and Gordon Ramsay are very different ... but they're also more alike than you'd think. They're both polarizing TV personalities. Drop either name and you're bound to met with a strong reaction (negative or positive). They both have very special vocabularies. Fieri describes everything in terms of Flavortown. He can't just say he likes something; It's that it "just kung fu'd my palate, dude." Ramsay's lingo is colorful in a very different way - one which involves many f-bombs. And they both love burgers (duh), but they practice disparate styles of cooking them.
Given all the wacky creations he's tasted on DDD over the years, it comes with no surprise that Fieri's burger is a little crazy. His is stuffed with bacon, chorizo, red onions, and Swiss cheese. In comparison, Ramsay's burger seems boring at first. His "perfect" burger is grilled with cheddar, a toasted bun, some mayo, lettuce, tomato, and grilled onion. Here's how the two stacked up:
Guy Fieri's
This is not something you want to make for a crowd. His recipe calls for a ton ingredients (19!) and requires a lot of time. You need to cook chorizo and bacon, make a ketchup, then stuff, sear and bake the burgers.
The chorizo filling sounds amazing, but the flavor was overpowered by all the ground beef. (Each patty has about a half pound of it.) The dill in the ketchup was polarizing. Many taste testers took issue with it. I, personally, didn't love the half hour required to simmer it.
My biggest problem with Fieri's recipe is that he doesn't season the actual burger. After stuffing them, he just throws them into the hot pan. No salt or pepper. Even though there was so much going on inside, the burger as a whole tasted rather plain.
Gordon Ramsay's
Gordon Ramsay's recipe was a slightly tougher to figure out because there weren't actual ingredient amounts or instructions to go off of. We relied entirely on his segment on Good Morning America.
Not shockingly, Ramsay's beef preference is a little fancier. He recommends throwing some ground brisket into the mixture along with some egg (to bind everything together). Unfortunately, the Whole Foods butcher laughed as us when we asked for a quarter pound of chopped brisket. So we just used chuck. He also wants you to season the burger the night before, which we didn't do.
We did follow his lead with everything else and overall, we were pleased with how simple the process is. His secret to grilling the best burgers is basting the patties with butter. Like you would a Thanksgiving turkey.
Another big takeaway: Season everything very aggressively. Season the burger before and after it's cooked. Season the tomatoes that you place on the burger. Even season the buns!
The Verdict
Ramsay wins. In this case, simple is best. Seasoning each and every component made a huge difference overall. His was the epitome of what you'd think a burger should taste like. To be fair, some people did prefer Fieri's, even without the final seasoning. But the ease of Ramsay's still overpowers the pizazz of the Food Network star's stuffed version.
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