How much ground beef do you need?
Tell BurgerLab how many burgers you're cooking. It returns the exact weight of beef to buy, how to blend two packs to land on the fat ratio you want, and the salt, buns, cheese and sauce the batch needs. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.
The shopping list
Everything the batch above needs, in one pass down the aisle.
- Ground beef — buy at least2 lb (907 g)
- Patties to form8 × 4 oz
- Buns8
- Cheese slices (one per patty)8
- Kosher salt (1% of raw weight)9 g
Press them wider than the bun. Patties pull in as the fat renders, so a raw patty cut to bun width finishes narrower than the bread it sits on.
Can't find your grind? Blend two packs.
Shops rarely stock every ratio. If you can only find a lean pack and a fatty pack, this works out how much of each to buy so the combined mix lands exactly on your target. Read the fat percentage off each label and enter it below.
20% fat — 80 / 20
2 lb (907 g)
- Leaner pack at 10% fat1 lb (454 g)
- Fattier pack at 30% fat1 lb (454 g)
The formula, if you want to check it
With a total weight M, a target fat percentage T, a leaner pack at a% fat and a fattier pack at b% fat:
lean pack = M × (b − T) ÷ (b − a), and the fattier pack makes up the remainder.
It only has a solution when T sits between a and b — you cannot reach 20% fat from two packs that are both leaner than 20%.
Burger sauce, scaled to the batch
A starting ratio, measured in parts so it scales cleanly. Amounts below assume roughly one tablespoon per burger — double them if you're dressing both bun halves. Taste and adjust; this is a base, not a rule.
| Ingredient | Parts | For this batch |
|---|---|---|
| Mayonnaise | 4 | 4.3 tbsp · 63 ml |
| Ketchup | 2 | 2.1 tbsp · 32 ml |
| Dill pickle relish | 1 | 1.1 tbsp · 16 ml |
| Yellow mustard | 0.5 | 0.5 tbsp · 8 ml |
| Total | 7.5 | 8 tbsp · 118 ml |
Mix it the day before if you can. The relish needs time to season the mayonnaise, and a rested sauce spreads without tearing the bun.
Cook reference
The handful of numbers worth knowing before the pan gets hot.
- 160°F / 71°C Safe minimum internal temperature for ground beef, measured in the centre of the thickest patty. Source: USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service
- 145°F / 63°C Safe minimum for whole steaks and roasts, plus a three-minute rest. Grinding spreads surface bacteria through the meat, which is why a burger's target is higher than a steak's. Source: USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service
- 30% fat The legal ceiling for fat content in US retail ground beef, which makes 70/30 the fattiest grind you can buy. Source: USDA ground beef standard
- 80 / 20 Percent lean and percent fat by weight — not a grade or a cut. Leaner grinds hold less rendering fat, so they dry out sooner and give you less margin for error. Definition used on US retail labels
How BurgerLab gets there
- Total beef. Burgers × patties per burger × patty weight. Ounces convert at 28.3495 g, pounds at 453.5924 g — no rounding until the number is printed.
- Fat and lean split. The grind percentage applied to that total, so you can see what you're actually buying.
- Blend. A two-pack mass balance:
M × (b − T) ÷ (b − a), with the fat percentages you read off the labels. - Salt. 1% of the raw weight — a ratio, not a law. Move it if you salt heavier or lighter.
- Sauce. The parts ratio scaled to roughly one tablespoon per burger; a tablespoon is 14.7868 ml.
Everything runs in your browser. No account, no data leaves the page, and the calculator keeps working with the tab offline.
Questions
How much ground beef do I need per burger?
Multiply your patty weight by the number of patties. Eight single 4 oz patties need 32 oz of raw ground beef — exactly 2 lb, or 907 g.
Pick 2 oz for thin smash patties, 4 oz for a standard burger, or 6 oz for a thick pub burger, and the calculator handles the multiplication and the unit conversion.
What does 80/20 mean on a pack of ground beef?
The two numbers are percent lean and percent fat by weight: 80/20 is 80% lean muscle and 20% fat.
US regulation caps retail ground beef at 30% fat, so 70/30 is the fattiest grind you can legally buy.
Can I mix two packs of ground beef to get 80/20?
Yes, as long as your target sits between the two fat percentages. To make 2 lb of 80/20 from a 90/10 pack and a 70/30 pack, use 1 lb of each.
The general formula is lean pack = total × (fatty% − target%) ÷ (fatty% − lean%). The blend solver above runs it for any target and any two packs, and tells you when the target is out of reach.
What temperature should a burger be cooked to?
The USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service gives a safe minimum internal temperature of 160°F (71°C) for ground beef, measured in the centre of the thickest patty.
Grinding spreads any surface bacteria through the meat, which is why ground beef has a higher target than a whole steak (145°F / 63°C plus a three-minute rest).
How much salt do burger patties need?
A 1% ratio — 1 g of salt for every 100 g of raw meat — is a common starting point, so 2 lb (907 g) of beef takes about 9 g. Weigh it rather than measuring by spoon: crystal size varies a lot between salt brands, so the same spoon holds very different amounts.
Season the outside of the formed patties just before they hit the pan. Salt mixed through the grind dissolves muscle protein and gives a springy, sausage-like texture.