The Beefy Boys cookbook is your bible for burgers

It’s safe to say that the Beefy Boys – friends Anthony Murphy, Daniel Mayo-Evans, Christian Williams and Lee Symonds – are fond of a burger. Despite a background without a whiff of hospitality and careers as DJs or gas engineers, they have taken their cooking skills from – as the book’s strapline states – backyard barbecues to world-class burgers.

The drive to create award-winning burgers started with dissatisfaction at what was on offer in the UK: grey, greasy hockey pucks of meat of questionable origin. Fuelled by US imports on TV depicting burly blokes salivating over fat and filthy mile-high burgers, they felt the need to create a proper burger using the best ingredients. And being from Hereford, they had the cattle to make it.

After a lot of research and a lot of barbecues, the group decided to go professional, starting with pop-ups in nightclubs and beer gardens and then to Grillstock in Bristol, where, fulled by Jägerbombs, they presented their best barbecue. Their third attempt at Grillstock, where they debuted their burgers, won them first place and a trip to Las Vegas to cook at the World Burger Championship. They competed there every year for five years, entering burgers seen in the book and always coming in among the top 10. At that point, slightly burnt out from competing, they decided to open their first restaurant in Hereford, which was a sell-out success. The group now has two further restaurants in Shrewsbury and Cheltenham.

The burgers themselves can be made and cooked in seven different ways, from Cali style (or mustard fried) to the Juicy Lucy (with a melted cheese insert), along with comprehensive step-by-step instructions, including how to steam the bun before building the burger – something they consider an essential step. Each recipe helpfully illustrates the order you must build your burger, from bottom to top, along with recipes for buns, pickles, sauces and fries. There’s also a guide on how to plait a bacon lattice so as there’s a piece of crispy bacon in each mouthful, as well how to make a cheese skirt and dirty mayonnaise. They also touch on other barbecue dishes, such as pulled pork, pastrami and brisket, with instructions on precise temperatures to hold the meat at, how to wrap the joint in butcher’s paper and achieving the perfect bark.

The burgers themselves include their first burger the Beefy Boy, a classic stack of both American and Swiss cheese, bacon, burger, dill pickles, red onion, lettuce and special sauce in a homemade bun. Other burgers include the Christmas Boy which, as well as a beef patty, contains turkey thigh confit, a stuffing patty, a ‘moist maker’ (a slice of white bread soaked in gravy) a bubble and squeak patty and a pig in blanket spiked on the top. The Hell Boy, so hot that “the only person to eat it comfortably was a ex-Special Forces vet who had lost his tastebuds in an IED explosion”, contains Hell Boy sauce, sliced Scotch Bonnets, bacon, cheese, onion, and two whole red chillies on the top of the bun for devil horns. If you’re looking for pure burger filth, that comes in the form of the Birria Boy, a double patty with cheese, Jalapeño mayo and onions, topped with slow-cooked bone marrow and beef chuck birria, and a birria broth on the side for dipping.

There are small chapters devoted to chicken and veggie burgers and even a recipe for a cheeseburger salad, but this is a beefy obsession. The story of the boys’ travels to the top, entertainingly narrated by Murphy, takes an unexpected and sorrowful turn, rounding the book out from being a hymn to dude food to a thoughtful and affecting read. But make no mistake, this is a sleeves up, elbows on the table, don’t wear white and don’t read it while you’re hungry cookbook, and all the better for it.

The Beefy Boys by Anthony Murphy (Quadrille, £20)

See the recipe for the Chipotle Boy burger from the book here