Juicy, Incredible Hand-Chopped Beef Tenderloin Burgers with Yam Fries

This burger is gorgeous. It’s meaty, juicy and super tender, with just a little more of a bite than the usual ground beef burger. The meat is hand chopped, which is not such a bad job if you use nice piece of tenderloin. Sirloin is lovely too and has incredible flavor, but if you do use sirloin, allow for a little more careful chopping for the tenderest burger possible. If you are squeamish with raw meat or shorter on time, this recipe works fabulously with ground beef as well. Please do consider a better quality ground sirloin though, and organic meat is ideal.

These yam fries are super-easy, highly addictive, and have that coveted sweet/salty/chewy caramelized thing going on. Straight out of the oven, they are chewy at the edges and soft and steamy in the middle.

Start with the yams; they take about fifteen minutes to prep and a good thirty to forty-five minutes in the oven (which you should preheat to 400 degrees at this point). Scrub and rinse two or three large yams, or five or six small. Cut in half lengthwise. Grasp a half firmly and cut triangular wedges, starting in the center of yam, cutting out. Each yam half should yield between three and five wedges.


In a large bowl, toss the yam wedges in a few tablespoons of olive oil and plenty of salt and fresh cracked pepper. Place skin-side down, in one layer, on a baking sheet or two. Don’t be afraid to crowd these suckers, as long as they are in one layer they will be happy. At this point, a sprinkling of ancho or chipotle chile powder would be great to boost the flavor, and so would a couple of extra turns of the pepper mill. Throw the yam fries in the oven for at least a half hour, turning once midway through baking. As long as the fries aren’t burning, you can leave them in the oven as long as you want. More oven time adds to the gorgeous chewy caramelized bite.


Now for the burger, start chopping that tenderloin! For four hefty burgers, I generally use a pound or so of tenderloin. Slice it as thinly as possible and then cut each slice, with the grain, into strips. Finally, mince each strip against the grain into teeny tiny steak bites, as small as possible. Once I have minced a few slices of tenderloin, I like to quickly run my knife through one more time before transferring that little pile into a bowl. Continue with the rest of the tenderloin slices.

Add to the meat: one tablespoon Dijon mustard, a finely minced half of a small sweet or red onion, one egg, a third of a cup of Panko or other coarse breadcrumbs, and plenty of salt and fresh ground pepper. Ground cumin and coriander are lovely in here too, if you wish. Now, get in there with your hands and mix up the burgers. Shape into equally sized patties by forming the mixture into a ball in the bowl, then using the side of your hand to separate the ball first in half, and then quarters. Now go ahead and shape into patties, voila! This recipe makes four large burgers, but you could go a little further and get six smaller ones out of it as well.

Heat up your grill or cast iron pan on medium-high and get it smoking hot, then lightly oil and place your patties on the heat. Be pretty gentle here, the hand-chopped meat does not stick together quite as well as ground beef. Cook for three to five minutes on each side, depending on your preference. If you do like your meat on the rare side, you can go ahead and prepare it that way here, since the meat is not pre-ground. Please do make sure you only flip once though! Get a good crunchy meat sear on one side, then flip and cook the other side to your taste.

The rest of the drill: split, toast and dress up buns the way you like, take the yammers out of the oven and douse with whatever sauce or condiment you fancy (I like balsamic vinegar or ketchup doctored with a little hot sauce), and enjoy!