The Best Cheeseburger Sliders You’ll Ever Make

If you need to feed a crowd fast,

sliders are your secret weapon.

They're small, quick to assemble,

and you can build a whole tray in about 15 minutes.

The meat is one slab. The buns are in a slab.

All you really gotta do is give it a little cut,

stack everything up and everyone has burgers.

This is everything you love about a White Castle slider,

but homemade and much better.

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This method starts out

with a cookie sheet or a half sheet tray.

I have two pounds of 80/20 ground beef.

That means there's 80% meat, 20% fat.

That's a really good meat to fat ratio for a burger.

I have some finely diced white onions, salt and pepper.

It's really that easy. You don't even need to oil the pan.

There's enough fat in the meat to oil the pan,

and all you really have to do is take the meat out

of the packages and press it in.

This is a critical part to our recipe

'cause you really want this to fit the tray,

so it's almost like you're patting out pizza dough

into your tray.

This is gonna make the burger bind together

so it's not crumbly.

It's also gonna make our sliders nice

and even when we cut them.

The 80/20 has a good fat-to-lean ratio.

I feel like if you're gonna use a leaner meat

you're gonna get a dry and crumbly slider

and that's not what we want.

We want this to have a little meatiness,

a little juiciness to it.

Basically fat equals flavor and that's what we want.

As you pat this down, I want you to also remember

that when this cooks, it's gonna shrink up.

Take the time to spread it out as even as possible

so that when it does shrink up, you have nice even slider.

So that's good. I have my meat evenly spread.

I take my onions and I just spread them on the top.

Make sure you get in the corners and on the edges.

The finer the onions the better

because you don't wanna have big chunks of onions.

You want these to kind of melt away

and steam a little when we actually put these in the oven,

that's beautiful.

And then of course we're gonna season this up.

Some fresh cracked black pepper

[pepper mill grinding]

and some salt, now don't be skimpy with the salt,

I know a lot of people like,

Oh chef you put too much salt on things.

I feel like I have a pretty good practice hand on salt.

I'm not just dumping it on. I'm going high when I season.

I'm trying to get a nice dispersion on my salt,

but you want this to be seasoned well,

you want to taste that meat, and that's it.

That's the burger meat in the pan ready to go into the oven.

What I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna pop this in the fridge,

get all of my toppings

and my buns ready right, before the party starts,

I can pop these in the broiler, cook 'em up,

and finish assembling my sliders.

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So I have the buns and I have prep for garlic butter.

I like to put a little bit of topping on the top of my buns,

so I'm gonna make a garlic butter with some parsley

and just brush it on top before they go in the oven.

I think it just gives you a little more

kind of that savoriness to our dish

and it makes 'em just slightly more impressive

than just a plain slider.

I have a pot. I have a stick of butter.

As this butter starts to melt, I'm gonna get my garlic

and I'm gonna add it to the pot.

I don't really want this to brown at all.

I just want to kind of scent the butter

with the chopped garlic.

And I'm not too worried that the butter's not melted

because I really want a nice strong garlicky flavor.

My heat's at medium high right now,

but I'm just trying to melt it a little quicker.

I'm gonna lower it down once the butter melts

to about medium, I have some fresh chopped parsley here,

so I'm gonna wait till add my parsley to the end

right before we put the burgers in the oven

so it stays nice and green.

I can smell my garlic.

It's a nice kind of mellow, sweet flavor.

And that's it.

The butter is melted, the garlic is lightly cooked,

not brown at all.

I'm gonna take this, I'm gonna put it aside

and then I'm gonna get to my buns.

So I'm using Trader Joe's Hawaiian rolls.

The thing here is you do not want

to separate these buns at this point.

Leave them in a slab.

This is what makes everything so quick

and easy when we put these together.

You can use whatever roll you like,

I just happen to prefer the Trader Joe's Hawaiian rolls.

If you like a potato roll, use a potato roll.

It's up to you. I just like the sweetness of these rolls.

What we want to do is get our knife, a nice serrated knife,

and cut them down the middle

so that I have basically a slab of slider bun.

They are totally intact and that's how you want them to be.

We are not building individual sliders here.

We're building them in slabs

and this is what makes it so quick and easy.

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We're gonna broil these burgers

for about five to seven minutes

and then we're gonna build our sliders.

Broiling these burgers are gonna keep 'em juicy.

They're not gonna cook for a long time,

so we retain a lot of that juiciness.

We don't wanna roast these in the oven and dry them out.

If you're worried about undercook this,

keep it in for a little longer.

But basically because the meat is so thin

that five to seven minutes you're cooking it

all the way through.

Okay, let's throw these in the oven.

It's been about six or seven minutes.

You'll notice that there's a fair amount of liquid in here.

I'm just gonna drain it off into a bowl.

Meat is ready to go. We're ready to build.

I have my burgers, I have my buns, I have my cheese,

I have everything next to me here.

So I'm gonna take my lids

and I'm gonna put them aside for now.

I'm gonna get my meat

and all I really gotta do with this is cut it in half

with my spatula fairly even.

And then the meat,

look at how perfectly it fits onto our slider buns.

And then we take our cheese, cheese it up.

Don't be afraid to overlap your cheese.

We're gonna put a fair amount of cheese on here.

I want them to be really nice

and cheesy I'm probably gonna do like one

and a half slices per, don't be afraid.

I like to use the stuff that they slice of the deli.

I think it has a little more flavor.

I think it has a better texture than the slices

that are in cellophane.

If that's all you have, use it.

I like to sing the praises of American cheese.

Some people don't, but I think it's really delicious,

especially for sliders.

And now what we're gonna do is we're gonna top with ketchup.

You don't have to be too precise.

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Now I have my pickles, one pickle per

right on top of your ketchup.

Three across, four down,

two little ones there.

All right, and then we take the lids, put them on top,

and then we're gonna take our garlic butter.

Now I take the parsley and add it

because I want the parsley to kind of have

that nice freshness and nice color.

Mix it into your garlic butter

so you have a nice garlic, parsley, butter.

Brush this really well get all that garlic

and that butter onto your buns,

like try and scoop up some of that nice stuff, right?

If you don't want to add the garlic butter, that's fine.

These burgers are really good.

I'm just kind of like making it a little extra special,

Chef Franking it up.

You definitely can't get this at White Castle,

so we're not even finished yet with these,

you can eat them now and be totally satisfied

and happy everyone around you'll be satisfied

and happy but there's one last step.

I'm gonna cover these with foil.

Put 'em in the oven for about five minutes

so that everything gets a chance to steam and meld together.

It's gonna melt the cheese.

The buns are gonna get soft

and squishy and it's just gonna be perfect.

The oven's at 350

and we're gonna put 'em in there for about five minutes.

Alright, so we ready for the big reveal.

Let's see how they look.

I got a little knife,

and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut in-between

where all the slices are.

I think these look spectacular.

Anyone who likes sliders is gonna love these.

Plus we got a big stack of burgers in fractions

of the time it would take to make this many burgers

for everyone on the grill

and then making individual patties.

We got a big stack of sliders there.

Alright, it's time to taste

and I don't know if I can eat the whole tray,

but I'm gonna just take one for now

I'm gonna stay in control,

okay, I got one in the back right here.

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I think my bite was a little too big?

It's got everything that a classic slider has.

It's meaty, it's cheesy, the bun is nice and soft.

A little sharpness of that pickle, the ketchup,

the garlic butter just kind of adds that little like,

you know, pinch of goodness at the end.

And one of the best things about these is

that they take little to no time.

You can get everyone involved, they're fun to assemble.

Absolutely delicious.

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