Cheeseburger Calories

Welcome, where I will be taking delicious restaurant style foods that are notoriously high in calories and making an at-home version that still tastes amazing but with significantly lower calories and no I'm not just gonna cut a smash burger in half in order to call it lower calorie instead we'll first make the original version to establish a baseline of calories and understand how it's made then we'll analyze and see where we can make some lower-calorie substitutions while maintaining the highest level of taste adherence to the original version

I'm Ethan a home cooking nerd who likes to find better ways to cook and share them with all of you whether you want to lose weight stay exactly like you are or gain some weight I still think that learning how to cook lower-calorie and higher calorie meals is a completely invaluable skill as someone who has gone through a significant 80-pound weight loss over

The past several years I would have absolutely killed for a series like this when I was starting out and also I'm not going to tell you what's healthy or how you should be eating or cooking I'm just gonna give you the information and I'll let you guys decide how you want to use it but first up let's make this restaurant style smash burger and for the lower-calorie version you don't even have to give up the brioche bun here's what a typical smash burger may look like in a restaurant

To start to get 5 ounces of 80% lean and 20% fat ground beef and separate them into two and a half ounce balls of meat these are then season with salt and fresh ground pepper for toasting the buns butter is melted on the upper griddle and then the buns are used to mop it up to get that beautiful browning the balls of meat are laid down on the griddle with parchment paper and then smashed very very thin to develop that nice crust on the outside once that has developed they are then scraped and flipped before placing at least one slice of American cheese in between though some restaurants may use more to assemble the burger 1/2 tablespoon of mayo is slathered on the bottom bun and the other half on the top bun that is then layered with shredded lettuce red onion and pickles

Finally the smash burger and that top bun and there it is in all its glory one of my absolute favorite foods let's take a look at the calorie breakdown the restaurant style smash burger clocks in at a total of 757 calories from 31 grams of carbs 54 grams of fat and 33 grams of protein in terms of percentage our calories are 17% carbs 65% fat and 18% protein so clearly the fats make up the majority and this is the first spot to look if we want to lower our calories also as a side note the calorie information was gathered from My Fitness

Pal and I had the ingredient breakdown the link below if you would like to take a look but let's hop into the substitutions so the obvious first substitution is using lean or ground beef in my case I picked up 93 7 ground beef which has about 150 fewer calories for 5 ounces but the question is what do we lose in terms of taste and texture by using leaner beef from the Food Lab by Kenji Lopez, he notes that fat is where most of the flavor of the animal actually comes from for example a steak with well-marbled fat tastes beefier than a leaner cut so by using leaner the beef we can expect a burger that tastes a little less beefy what about texture so at room temperature the fat in ground beef is solid but when it cooks it renders out into a liquid so if we have less fat then we have less liquid fat

When it cooks which gives burger that juicy quality so it's gonna be a burger that is slightly less juicy however due to the pocket of gooey American cheese we create by using two patties you won't miss it as much compared to say a full 5 ounce burger let's talk butter in the restaurant style burger we toasted the buns with 14 grams or a tablespoon of butter to get some nice browning but if we substitute 7 grams of mayo we can lower the calories by half and in my opinion it's better from a cooking standpoint you may have heard of people using mail for their grilled cheese instead of butter and it's because the mail has a higher smoke point than butter and more

Importantly it spreads so much easier by getting end-to-end coverage of the buns with just seven grams of male we can create perfect browning it's a win-win for me last up is switching out the mail, we spread on the burger for a lower calorie sauce this is where we turn to mustard ketchup and some finely minced pepperoncini using equal parts of each mix together you get a sauce that is tangy from the mustard a little sweet from the ketchup and an acidic with the crunch from the pepperoncini one tablespoon of this sauce is about 15 calories compared to 100 calories for a tablespoon of mayo with all the substitutions discussed

Let's go through the step-by-step recipe and stick around for the taste test at the end to start we need to have all of our toppings ready due to how fast that the burger actually cooks for my toppings I finally slice some red onion romaine lettuce and gathered a bunch of pickle slices and can't forget that American cheese then for our burger sauce, I mixed in 14 grams of Dijon mustard 14 grams of ketchup and 1 finely chopped pepperoncini to prep the brioche bun all you're gonna do is take your 7 grams of mayo and just spread that on both the top and bottom pieces of the bun at the stove set a cast-iron pan or griddle over medium-high heat and while that's coming up to the temperature you can take your five ounces of 93 seven ground beef and prepare those into two and a half ounce balls of meat sprinkle the exterior with a generous pinch of salt and fresh ground pepper and then roll them around a bit so there is seasoning all along the outside at the stove place the prepared brioche buns on the upper part of the hot griddle now on the lower a portion of the griddle we're going to add the balls of meat and add some nice parchment paper on them to prevent spatulas sticking and immediately smash them until they are thin a little bit smaller than a half of an inch

You're gonna let these cook for about 60 seconds to let that crust develop after 60 seconds flip the spatula upside down and scrape the burger from the pan and then flip over the burger repeat this for the second burger immediately place a slice of American cheese on the second flip burger then place the first flip burger on top so we get that gooey the pocket of cheese then you can just turn off the heat don't forget to take your brioche buns off the heat before they burn and now we can assemble to assemble these place about 1/2 tablespoon of the sauce on the bottom and the other half on the top bun then

You can add your shredded lettuce the red onion and the pickle slices followed by the smash burger and the top bun and this one is an absolute beauty as well to be fair I actually smashed this one better than the first one to match the size of the bun so aesthetically this kind of one looks better for the calorie breakdown of this low-calorie version it comes in at 522 calories 34 grams of carbs 23 grams of fat and 37 grams of protein let's do that taste test

Alright everybody best time of the video taste test time so I've got the higher calorie kind of restaurant-style one on the right then I've got the lower calorie version on the left and I'm gonna I'm already certain to realize it's gonna be hard to do because I would like these to both be hot at the same time but this one has been sitting this one's been sitting because thumbnails and all that good stuff but let's give these a taste as always a great Smashburger

Let me taste this one I'll get the I'll get the thoughts on the first one as well so I'm not gonna try to say that this one is better because it's not this one definitely just tastes better overall to me, it's got that little bit of extra juiciness, you really notice the the beefiness of this one a lot more like we're talking about with the fat right since it's got more fat that's where a lot of the flavor lies I mean that's why people say that is a flavor because it literally is so definitely more beefy on this and then with the the mayo in there kind of gives it a different creamy component versus the tangy sauce on this I'd actually much prefer this tangy sauce it's a little a bit sweet from the ketchup it's tangy and it's a little tiny bit spicy from those pepperoni knees and then you can tell that this is leaner beef for sure

You know it's a little bit like drier but because we put that cheese in the center it actually creates this nice like kind of pocket of gooeyness that you would kind of want like juiciness and fattiness that you would get from you know a higher fat burger and for both of these I'll have the full calories listed in two links below with the tables for all the ingredients and everything's if you guys want to check those out it's all pooled from My Fitness Pal so it should be pretty accurate and then I'll also link down this, below this book, it's a science-based book called understanding healthy eating if anyone's interested it's I think it's a really good the book I would have again another resource that I would have loved when I was starting out that's gonna wrap it up for this one hopefully you guys enjoy this series I think it's gonna be pretty fun because I really do love making foods tastes really good that still fit in with you know my day-to-day lifestyle like I don't dye it I just make food to try to fit in what is going to be like I maybe I'll have a smash burger three times a week maybe sometimes they'll be like this other days I still want a smash burger but I'll go for a lower calorie version like this so I think it's it's an interesting topic within the food itself but that's gonna wrap it up for this one I'll catch you in the next one comment down below on what types of food or what dish you want to see me do next and I'll see you next time peace

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