Under what circumstances should meatballs and burger patties include egg, bread crumbs, flour...

Under what circumstances should meatballs and burger patties include egg, bread crumbs, flour, and other such binding agents?

Meatballs, always.
Burgers, never.
It's that simple.

Why do burger recipes always include binding agents then? Are they top plebs?

usually.

Ramsey did a section on this once. He asked a couple of different people to make a burger (gave them mince, egg, seasoning, bread crumbs) and then showed the results. They all fell apart and tasted crap apparently.

His burger used neither and was the best by far, not just by virtue of being a 3star chef.

Also Meat has a protein in it that binds the meat when massaged.

he tells the truth, burgers should be spices and meat nothing els, also dont work your burger meat to much, if its shaped as a pattie then then dont keep working it

>Also Meat has a protein in it that binds the meat when massaged.

Why do the meatballs need it then?

Taste.
You want your burger to taste like seasoned ground beef.
You want your meatball to taste a bit more loaf-ish, as it's gonna get paired with gravy or sauce. I use chopped onion, cheese, and breadcrumbs as well as small amount of egg, ketchup, and worcestershire in my meatballs.

Also, burgers aren't as likely to fall apart in patty shape as meatballs are in ball shape, as long as you're not using lean as fuck ground beef, which is gross and tasteless anyway.

Japanese "hamburg steak" is great if you want to cook ground beef and serve it with rice

>Japanese "hamburg steak" is great
No it isn't

I agree.

I agree and so does Heston so you are in good company

This. If you add bread crumbs and binder to a burger you basically have Salisbury steak. Which is fine, but it's not a burger.

Recipes call for whatever recipes call for. What the fuck are you even asking?

no. Salisbury Steak is just a plain hamburger patty served on a plate

No, it's an immigrant/Depression-era holdover. You add the milk, egg, bread crumbs to stretch the meat and spices to make it taste good. A traditional wop meatball is actually a dough, somewhat dry and sticky to the touch, and you can(and should) easily double the volume of the meat.

an actual hamburger of pure met is a luxury snack, at least originally- they were around 2 oz, not the half pound monsters that are normal today. .

loads of other poverty tier recipes do this, you want to add stuff to meat to make it more filling, look at tamales, that's a scoop of meat in a assload of corn pudding to make you feel like you getting more. or kibbe, or stuffed peppers dolmas, chicken rice and peas, etc etc.

I do think the best burger is the ol' salt, pepper, panfryed, but I enjoy an exotic once in a while. my friends mom used to make one with celery and dried spices and some soup packet shit that was amazing; of course, I wanted to come on her tits, she was a complete milf

meat+ patties won't fall apart if you cook them longer, which of course is not ideal for the modern burger, so that episode was a bit of a red herring. He was just saying that the classic burger is best without additives

When you want dat shmeaty texture

you normally add to the meat to prevent it from drying out during the cooking process.

My great grandma used to make something called "poor man's soup," which was a similarly stretched out skimpy-on-the-beef soup, with pastina and escarole and whatever.

I always thought Salisbury steak was a small, patty shaped meatloaf. Maybe that's just how we did it, cause the spooks took our money due to mob connections. Damned if it don't taste good though.

it depends. With meatloaf you add breadcrumbs and eggs for structure and all kinds of other shit for flavor. Mmmm. I havent had a good meatloaf in awhile. I think I might start a meatloaf thread to get some new ideas.

>I think I might start a meatloaf thread to get some new ideas.
Throw in some tex-mex veg, mix and glaze it with BBQ sauce. That's the way to do it.

used to smash sausage meat and mince together to make a meatloaf no real binding agents needed.

>cause the spooks took our money due to mob connections

The feels. The spooks took my college fund too.

That's just a big meatball.