The World Recipes

The Wayfare Tavern Burger from restaurateur Tyler Florence is seen in this July 19, 2010 photo. This burger includes four cuts of meat in the patty, is dressed with a lemon aioli and is presented on a freshly baked bun. (AP Photo/Larry Crowe)

When Tyler Florence was creating hamburgers for his new restaurant, his goal was simple — a burger that stays moist no matter how well-done it is cooked.

The solution was all a matter of numbers — one month of experimenting with the percentage of fat and the number of cuts of meat.

‘Most people do an 80-20 lean-to-fat ratio,” Florence, whose Wayfare Tavern opened recently in San Francisco, said in a telephone interview. ‘We go 75-to-25 ratio, so it’s a little fattier. So even if you like it well done, it’s still nice and moist.”

For the cuts of meat, Florence settled on four of them — prime rib, brisket, skirt steak and filet. And after they are ground (at another facility), it’s mostly a hands-off procedure.

‘When it comes in, no one is really allowed to touch it except to take it out of the package and weigh it out,” said Florence, host of Food Network’s ‘The Great Food Truck Race.” ”It gets touched once before it goes on the grill. It loses that fluffiness once you work it too much. It starts to become chewy really quickly.”

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