Grilled burgers are never good. There. I said it.
Don't get me wrong—they're absolutely fun to make in the summer months. I love tossing thin, hand-formed patties on the grill with a mess of vegetables, hot dogs, and sauced-up chicken wings.
But those burgers on the grill are in no way great burgers. Too often they're dry and overly charred, and any trace of beefy flavor has been replaced by what can only be described as "grill." (Or worse, if you happen to end up at a cookout with someone who uses lighter fluid on their charcoal.)
This isn't anybody's fault per se—it's an inherent problem with that grill. The issue with cooking burgers atop the grates of a blazing charcoal grill is that burgers are meant to be cooked in their own fat. With a grill, all of those precious, fatty juices drip down to the fire below, causing the flareups that create that horrible, burnt crust. Got a burger with a higher fat content? Get ready for bigger flareups.
Luckily, we're in the business of solutions here at Epicurious. And as with so many other cooking conundrums, the answer lies in a cast iron skillet.