These are the best darn hamburgers you’ll ever make at home, bar none.
I’ve fiddled with homemade hamburger patty recipes for years; we all have, trying cracker crumb, egg, bread crumb, you name it… but this beats them all.
The kicker is — ready for this? It actually also ends up being just about the healthiest burger you’re ever going to have, because it’s based on a famous Weight Watchers burger recipe, known as their “Juicy Hamburgers” recipe. What I’ve done is reduce the work just a tidge, while adding one or two ingredients that just take it and knock it out of the ballpark.
The recipe is very simple: just a few ingredients out of the cupboard thrown together in a few seconds, and then mixed into extra-lean ground beef so that you’re getting a healthy, all pure beef burger. It’s also very filling, because each burger is a quarter-pound of pure beef before cooking.
You can make this in the basket of a basket-type air fryer, or in the tray of an Actifry snacking model or Actifry 2-in-1 model. The photos below show it being made in an Actifry 2-in-1, but it will work just as great for any of the models types I’ve mentioned, and possibly in a convection counter-top oven as well.
Temperature: In basket-type air fryers, your cooking temperature will be 180 C / 350 F.
Air-fried Burgers
Ingredients
- 1 Tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon Maggi seasoning sauce
- liquid smoke (few drops)
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt (or salt sub)
- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1 teaspoon parsley (dried)
- 500 g ground beef (Raw. 1 lb.)
Instructions
- Spray the upper Actifry tray; set aside. If you are using a basket-type fryer, no need to spray the basket. In basket-types, your cooking temperature will be 180 C / 350 F.
- In a small bowl, mix together all the seasoning items, from the Worcestershire sauce down to and including the dried parsley.
- Add this to the beef in a large bowl.
- Mix well, but be careful not to overwork the meat as that leads to tough burgers.
- Divide the beef mixture into 4, and shape the patties. With your thumb, put an indent in the centre of each one to prevent the patties bunching up in the middle.
- Put tray in Actifry; spray tops of patties lightly.
- Cook 10 minutes for medium (or longer to desired degree of doneness). There is no need to turn the patties.
- Serve hot on a bun with side dishes of your choice.
Notes
Nutrition
Easily doubled or tripled.
I serve them in Weight Watcher hamburger rolls, either the regular fluffy ones, or the thins: both are great, and help to further reduce the calories in the overall hamburger. (Some hamburger rolls these days are overloaded with fat and sugar giving them more calories than the actual damn burger patties!)
Great guilt-free toppings include iceberg lettuce leaves, tomato and onion slices, mustard, sliced dill pickles, some relishes, etc. (Be aware of all the sodium, calories and sugar now in your ketchup , sadly.)
In the serving photos, the burger is pictured served with Weight Watchers thins for rolls, along with Skinny Caesar Salad and Duck fat French Fries , both of which like this burger are incredibly reasonable in calories, fat and sodium (and Weight Watcher points), meaning that you can enjoy this kind of easy, road-house food guilt-free quite regularly at home.
Each cooked patty is 3 Weight Watchers PointsPlus®. A Weight Watchers or similar hamburger roll is 3 additional points, bringing the total per burger for 6 points. Stick to stuff from the Weight Watchers’ free list (such as the items suggested above: tomato, onion, dill pickle, lettuce, mustard, etc.) and you have a 6 ww point hamburger.
* Nutrition info provided by https://caloriecount.about.com
* PointsPlus™ calculated by hotairfrying.com. Not endorsed by Weight Watchers® International, Inc, which is the owner of the PointsPlus® registered trademark.
* Actifry™ is a registered trademark of SEB, France.
Didn’t see temperature to cook bugers
Hi Judy, ground meats require a higher cooking temp than solid meats. Using an instant read meat thermometer (the OXO good grip ones are big and easy to read, and drop proof!), cook the hamburger patties to 71°C (160°F).
Read last question again. What temp to set air fryer to? Your cook time 10 min is based on what cooking temp
Oh right! Added to recipe. 180 C / 350 F.
It was mentioned in step 1.🙄
Hi I used 390 which is the highest for my Philips Air Fryer. Came out perfect for med. I wish the temp would have been stated.
It’s mentioned in step 1.
Me neither. Kind of a disappointment.
My airfryer cooks at 400 for meat. I cooked it there and turned out perfect. Seasoning was perfect as well.
Did your air fryer come with a pan like that…the one used to cook the burgers?
Thank you, Isa. I could not find it.
Isa, I took cook at a higher temperature but my air-fryer is only 1350 watts versus most I’ve seen are 1500. That may make a difference.
Hi! Can use ground turkey instead?
Thanks!
Ground poultry (chicken or turkey) would be a safe and interesting sub! You may also wish to try a mixture of ground meats.
I cooked it for the same 10-12mins at 350
everyone loved burgers and if it is cooked in air fryer than it is fabulous because in the air fryer cooking is healthier and I have hot air fryer so I will try this at my home with my new air fryer and recommend this to everyone
Came out very good, but a little raw, used ready made fresh sliders.. next time man 15 minutes.
Good point, cooking time may vary based on model of air fryer being used. As for any meat, use an instant read meat thermometer to test for doneness, which for ground beef is 71°C (160°F). These thermometers used to be expensive but are so cheap now and are everywhere. They save a lot of meat from being overcooked!
ya know? some of these air fryer recipes need to have a new format. In the ingredient or prep section a base line time / temp parameter should be added. One has to read the whole pretty web page to find that vital parameter
We agree. But would you believe, as fancy as all the programmers are making all the new recipe templates for the web now, not one of them has even thought about having a temperature field. It boggles the mind. We’ll try to figure out a better way to make it stand out despite none of the programmers clearly being cooks….
We have recently become obsessed with our air fryer! The thing is amazing. We have not made a burger in it yet but your recipe will be our first try at it! Thanks so much!
I am a single person. Can you just cook one burger
Batch cook and freeze individually!
My family loved these! We have been experimenting with our air fryer so I made these for lunch. They were so good my family requested them for dinner too. Will definitely be making these on a regular basis
Can you cook a frozen burger in your gowise Air-Fried
Yes. As for any meat, use an instant read meat thermometer to test for doneness, which for ground beef is 71°C (160°F). These thermometers used to be expensive but are so cheap now and are everywhere. They save a lot of meat from being overcooked!
These burgers were the best burgers I have eaten in my entire life! I was so scared that I would mess them up because I am still learning my air fryer, but this was simple and amazing!
**I didn’t have the Maggi Sauce, so I substituted Bragg’s Liquid Aminos.**
There are no instructions for making burgers in fryer with racks.
so this for 1/4lbers how long would you do 1/2lbers??
As for any meat, use an instant read meat thermometer to test for doneness, which for ground beef is 71°C (160°F). These thermometers used to be expensive but are so cheap now and are everywhere. They save a lot of meat from being overcooked!
How long and at what temperature to air fry pork burgers?
As for any meat, use an instant read meat thermometer to test for doneness, which for ground pork is 71°C (160°F). These thermometers used to be expensive but are so cheap now and are everywhere. They save a lot of meat from being overcooked!