The two-ingredient secret to making the perfect cheeseburger at home

With the footy finals round kicking off this weekend and the NFL on Aussie shores, attention has turned to our favourite foods to eat while watching our favourite sports teams battle it out.

And nothing hits the spot better than a cheeseburger, which you can make at home with perfect results.

Australian cook and author Justine Schofield has shared her top tips on Today, demonstrating a perfect hybrid of a classic American burger with a decidedly Aussie twist.

The key ingredient: American-style cheese. For her recipe, Schofield used a cheese called American Melt.

“When you’re making your burger at home, keep it simple,” she said.

Schofield recommended using beef mince with salt and pepper only, frying it up in a pan without onions.

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Her preferred beef mince blend is 80 per cent meat to 20 per cent fat, “because you need a bit of fat in there to keep it juicy”.

After flipping the burger patties, the cookbook author adds a slice of cheese on top and places a lid onto the pan for 30 seconds to give it time to melt.

While the cheese is melting, Schofield assembles her cheeseburger – and this is when the onions come into it.

Instead of frying them, she uses raw chopped brown onions. She also added a sauce made up of mayonnaise, mustard, tomato sauce, raw diced onions and diced pickles.

Dollops of this sauce on both sides of the bun are followed by a leaf of lettuce – this creates a barrier between the pattie and the bun, to prevent it becoming soggy – some tomato, and more pickles if preferred.

For those looking for an Aussie twist, she added some slices of beetroot.

“I disagree with bacon and pineapple,” Schofield said.

“It’s too overpowering, it’s too much.”

By the time the beef pattie is added, the cheese has perfectly melted. And these burgers are juicy!

When Today hosts Tom Steinfort and Sylvia Jeffreys sampled their burgers, they were dripping with juices.

To elevate cheeseburgers even further, Schofield recommended frying up the beef patties on the barbeque.