These famous little square burgers are my interpretation of White Castle sliders or Krystal burgers. Ready in under 30 minutes!
- 3 pounds ground beef (preferably grass fed)
- 1 medium onion (I like sweet like Vidalia)
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 15 slices American cheese, optional (Land O'Lakes or Boar's Head are the best quality)
- 15 small slider buns
- 15 single pickle chips, optional (just sliced dill pickles)
- 1/4 cup yellow mustard, optional (mustard is a Krystal thing, not White Castle)
-
Preheat oven to 425 degrees
Mince a small to medium onion, you want about a cup of minced onion.
-
On a baking tray mix three pounds ground beef with a finely diced small onion and some kosher salt and pepper. No need to over mix, just get the onion distributed evenly. Then
press down with your hands to make as level as possible, pushing the meat to the edge of the baking tray.Cover the meat with a piece of parchment paper and use another baking tray to gently press down on the mixture, this ensures an even layer all the way across making the meat cook evenly.
Remove the extra tray and parchment paper. Bake for 20 minutes in a preheated 425 degree
oven. -
Remove burgers when done to your liking.
While the White Castle slider recipe is cooking, split and place the buns open face on the second tray. Put a slice of American cheese on each bun.
Remove sliders from the oven and cut the sliders with a spatula, place on slider buns. Cover with the bun tops.
Cover the tray with foil and pop back in the oven for about a minute, just enough to steam the bun and melt the cheese.
Enjoy!
But your sliders are thicker than White Castle or Krystal burgers! Yep, see post for details. But the main reason is our proportion tastes better, less bread and more meat. It's also hard to work with super thin burgers. BUT, if you want authentic then halve the meat, onion, salt and pepper and cook for only 10 minutes.
If you want the sliders to have a char then turn up the heat to broil, place the tray on the top shelf and broil until you like the color. Personally, the sliders are between the bun and you really don’t see or taste the char. Also, White Castle steams their sliders so they don't have a char on them.
It's helpful when cutting the cooked sliders to hold a bun over the tray to determine where to cut the sliders, you want them to fit the bun. Typically you'll get 15 sliders out of the tray.
But Mustard isn't on White Castle burgers! You're correct. But this is a morph between White Castle and Krystal. Krystal puts mustard on their sliders. It's just a preference thing.