Photo by Claire Lower

Hello, dudes and dudettes, and welcome back to a cheesy, somewhat greasy installment of Will It Sous Vide?, the weekly column where I make whatever you want me to with my immersion circulator.


The Juicy Lucy emerged victorious in this week’s topic-picking session, and I was super stoked to see if a dip in the sous-vide tub could produce a juicy, cheese-filled burger that wouldn’t scald you with an explosion of molten dairy. I had been wanting to sous vide a burger for a while anyway, but didn’t really think a plain burger was worth our time, as both The Food Lab and Chef Steps had already explored the matter in great detail. In addition to making a classic American cheese-filled situation, I was also curious to see if we could use last week’s leftover sodium citrate to construct a cheddar-filled burger that wasn’t an oily, clumpy disaster.


Shredded sharp cheddar with sodium citrate. Photo by Claire Lower.

I had about seven different cheeses in my fridge, but of course none of them were American, so I made a trip to the store for the processed cheese food, along with two pounds of ground beef (I got one with a fat content of 20%, because fat is really tasty).



Photo by Claire Lower.

I formed the beef into four six-ounce patties, and filled them each with 20 grams of cheese. (I got that number because that’s the weight of a Kraft Single, which is what this recipe suggested filling a Juicy Lucy with.) For the cheddar burgers, I finely shredded the cheese and mixed it with a 1/4 teaspoon of sodium citrate, hoping the moisture from the cheese and surrounding meat would be enough to get the melting salt into solution.




Photo by Claire Lower.

I then sealed and cooked the burgers (one of each kind) at two different temperatures: 125℉ and 133℉ (the temperatures recommended by The Food Lab for medium rare and medium burgers, respectively).


Photo by Claire Lower.

Photo by Claire Lower.


One good thing about cooking the burgers this way is that they’re held together by the bag while they cook, meaning there is pretty much a zero-percent chance of the cheese leaking out. After about 45 minutes, I took the burgers out of their bags, patted them as dry as possible with some paper towels, and gave them a quick sear in a bacon-greased cast iron pan.



*pondering emoji* Photo by Claire Lower.


As you can see from the above photo, the vacuum-sealed bag does have a slightly odd effect on the patty’s appearance. The edges are tapered kind of strangely, and—because there’s liquid cheese in the center—you can’t exactly press down too hard to get the edges crispy. This meant semi-awkwardly maneuvering the burger with my spatula so the sides came in contact with hot pan, which wasn’t really that obnoxious, just slightly time consuming.



Then it was time to take a look inside. I started with the 125-degree, American-filled patty, bisecting it on a cutting board to reveal cheesy glory.


Photo by Claire Lower.

As one would expect from a burger cooked to this temperature, the meat was pretty pink, pretty juicy, and pretty delicious. (The “pretty delicious” here is contingent on you having a palate similar to mine, i.e., a palate that is currently obsessed with tartare, tataki and the like.) The cheese was fully melted, but not scorching hot, making this Juicy Lucy a pleasure to consume.


I then turned my attention to the cheddar-filled, medium-rare burger, and was greeted with this slightly disappointing sight:

Photo by Claire Lower.


As you can plainly see, the sodium citrate didn’t totally keep the cheddar congealing into a greasy lump. This wasn’t a complete surprise, since there was no way to mix the melted cheese with the sodium citrate once it was inside the burger, but at least we know for sure now. (I do think this problem could be solved by making the cheddar into a sauce—using either sous vide or the stove top method—and then freezing it into a disk and placing that inside the burger, but I didn’t have time to explore that option. Let me know if that’s an experiment you guys are interested in.) That being said, the cheddar didn’t taste bad by any means, it just wasn’t as gooey and homogeneous as its American friend. I ate it, and I was not mad about it.

I then repeated this process with the 133-degree patties, only this time I put them on buns so I could feel a little more like a human, rather than a rabid animal shoveling pink, cheese-filled meat into my mouth with no thought of decorum or decency.


What a glorious mess. Photo by Claire Lower.

The medium cheddar burger was pretty much like the previous cheddar burger, just less pink. The cheese was the same though: slightly congealed, but not bad tasting, and not too hot too eat.


Photo by Claire Lower.

The American-filled burger was delightful and, while the cheese flowed freely, the melted gooeyness within did not harm my mouth in any way. 10/10 would put it in my mouth again.


Now we must once again to our favorite question: Will the Juicy Lucy sous vide?

The answer? Yes, especially if you use American cheese. The medium-cooked, American-filled burger was pretty much my ideal burger, with melted, but not molten, cheese and juicy, perfectly-cooked meat. I was also impressed with how easy it was to make this patty of cheese-filled wonderment. I had attempted to make Juicy Lucys on the grill many moons ago, and had had a difficult time keeping everything from falling apart. Putting everything in a vacuum-sealed bag meant the meat kept its shape until it was completely cooked through, after which I was able to give it a quick sear without any cheese seeping out. It did take a bit longer, but it’s inactive time, and I was able to use that time to chop onion, slice pickles, and drink three Diet Cokes.