You can say what you want about In-N-Out burger but every time they open up in a new city the restaurant has hour-long lines of patrons waiting in any kind of weather just to try an In-N-Out burger.

I discovered this first hand living in Dallas, where In-N-Out recently opened quite a few restaurants for the first time in Texas. People slept out days before and the lines were on average three hours to get to the famous burger. The police had ten officers just regulating the traffic around the restaurant. It was crazy!

So what is it about the In-N-Out burger that is so special, that people will wait hours in line? Well, after trying it I am pretty sure it mostly is genius marketing from their corporate office, because, in my opinion, the burger is just a decent fast food burger that looks pretty and nothing else.

That doesn’t prevent me from trying to make an In-N-Out burger from scratch. I will be attempting to make the most famous of all their burgers: The Double Double, Animal Style. The Animal Style is not on their regular menu. You have to get to their (not so) secret menu at http://www.in-n-out.com/secretmenu.asp. Animal Style means a burger with hand-leafed lettuce, tomato, a mustard cooked beef patty, pickle, extra spread and grilled onions.

Homemade Double Doubles

So if you are unfortunate to live too far away from an In-N-Out here is your salvation. I will share my recipe of an almost real In-N-Out Double Double, Animal Style burger.

Since this is a double burger we need to make the beef patties thinner, which means we need meat with a higher fat content to make the burger juice enough. I recommend 70-80% lean and not leaner.

First we need to make the secret sauce for the burgers.

In-N-Out Secret Sauce

Ingredients:

• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 6 tbsp ketchup
• 2 tbsp sweet relish

Mix all ingredients together and keep in refrigerator until ready to use.

Secret Sauce

Now it’s time to make the burgers.

Makes four ¼ lbs burgers

Ingredients:

• 1 lbs of ground chuck, 70-80% lean
• 2 large onions, finely chopped
• 8-12 dill pickles
• 2 tomatoes sliced ¼ inch or so
• 4 leaves of fresh Iceberg lettuce, bun size
• ¼ cup of yellow mustard
• 8 slices of American cheese (or other processed cheese that melts well)
• 4 hamburger buns, preferably store bought
• Salt and pepper for seasoning

Instructions:

• In a non-stick skillet under high heat add oil.
• When oil is shimmering add onions and turn down heat to medium
• Toss and stir for 10-15 minutes until browned but not burned, set aside (you will need to add some water every 2-3 minutes so the onions are not burned. When water evaporates, add more)
• Toast cut side of all buns under the broiler until light brown
• Make 8 patties of 2 oz each. Make them the size of the bun
• Heat a cast iron skillet with some oil until shimmering (it needs to be VERY hot)
• Add patties and cook until browned, about 1-2 minutes
• Add mustard onto the raw side of the meat patties before you turn them
• Turn patties and place a slice of cheese on all patties
• Divide onions on 4 of the patties with cheese
• Continue to cook for 1-2 minutes more until done.
• Place the patties without onions on top the ones with onions
• Spread the secret sauce on top of all bottom buns. Add pickles, lettuce and tomatoes also to bottom bun
• Transfer patty stacks to bottom buns. Top with top bun
• If you like, you can wrap half the burger with paper to make them look like the real thing but that is optional. The burger still tastes the same
• Serve immediately

If you don’t like mustard too much, you can eliminate the step where you add it during the cooking, but it will not be a true Animal Style burger then.