Today I want to talk about burgers. Not just any burgers, but the best butchers beef burgers in Australia from Millins Free Range Butchers. I’m lucky enough to know Stef and Angie Millin, the owners of Millin’s Free Range Butchers, located in Balgowlah Heights in Sydney. Check out their great site Millin’s Free Range Butchers
They asked me to shoot an amazing shot of their burger, using not only their award winning beef burger patties but also the Sonoma Milks buns, McClure’s Pickles and Lillie’s BBQ sauce they sell. A great combination I must say. I used the Lillie’s Gold BBQ Sauce which is a blend off BBQ sauce and South Carolina Mustard. You can get all the stuff to build this exact burger here.
I decided to combine it with some beautiful swiss cheese. A really simple combination which worked really well. You can use any cheese that melts well. I love to use Gouda, or Monterey Jack cheese too.
When cooking burger I used a super hot cast iron frying pan with a small amount on oil. Firstly form the shape of the burger, then once you’re cooking the burger don’t keep pushing down on it like you see a lot of people doing. All this does is squeeze all the juice out of the thing!
I recommend giving it 2 mins then turning it every 2 mins until it’s done. Once it’s almost cooked add a knob of butter, let it melt and spoon the melted butter over the burger. Add your cheese on top and give it a minute to begin to melt. Remove the burger from the pan and pop on a plate to rest for a couple of minutes. While the burger is resting, grab your bun and place the cut sides face down on the pan for 1-2 mins.
Now to style the burger I added some sauce on the bottom bun. Then add the pickles to the bottom bun. Place the burger on there then added some pickles on top. I sauced the top bun a little bit, but don’t add too much initially. If you’re happy with the general look of the thing you can then start to have a bit of fun adding more sauce in certain areas to get the awesome drips down the burger and bun. The biggest key is to not do too much until you’ve taken a few shots to see how it looks through the lens. You can then fine-tune certain areas by adding more sauce or moving pickles so you can get the balance looking right.
For the lighting set up I shot daylight, with a scrim to diffuse the sunlight. A white reflector for the fill light and a silver reflector to pick up some of the highlights on the burger pattie. Then it was just a matter of playing around with the composition and lighting tweaks.
Not only did this burger look great but it tasted great too. Get down to Millin’s Free Range Butchers and grab some yourself. The burgers are sensational.
timmyfoody 