Ever had those days when you’re just craving a thick and juicy burger? I get it a lot—but as a grilling enthusiast, that surprises no one.

If you can relate, then you might’ve already had the bright idea of stocking up on some patties. Or if you’re more into DIY, you might’ve taught yourself about burger preparation. Now that’s dedication!

But for instances when you need to be cooking burgers to satisfy your immediate cravings—or if you need to feed a group of people and you literally don’t have time to thaw frozen hamburgers, you might find yourself frustrated.

How are you going to be able to serve delicious grilled burgers if you only have frozen ones?

What would your guests even say?!

Fortunately, the preparation for grilling frozen hamburgers won’t take the wind out of your sails young padawan. It’s practically effortless!

Skip the Defrosting: How to Grill Frozen Burgers Right Out of the Freezer

I’m about to take you through the easy step-by-step process. Learning how to grill frozen hamburgers won’t only save you the frustration, it’ll level up your grilling skills too!

Let’s get into it!

What You’ll Need

Preparing frozen meat before grilling doesn’t really require much. The materials you need are pretty basic and I’m sure you have all of these lying around in your kitchen:

• Butter knife
• Spatula or metal flipper
• Clean pan
• Meat thermometer

And of course, your frozen burger and grill equipment.

How To Grill Frozen Burgers

As mentioned earlier, cooking frozen burgers is dead simple. Of course, fresh burgers will always be desired by the majority but hey—sometimes you gotta make do with what you have! And don’t worry, grilling frozen hamburgers doesn’t affect the taste much at all!

Just follow the easy steps below and you can achieve a scrumptious burger regardless if your patties are frozen or fresh:

Step 1: Prepare the frozen hamburger

Most ready-to-cook hamburgers come in packs and are stacked on top of one another in between a sheet of plastic. Since getting them apart while frozen can be challenging, you can simply use a butter knife to slide in between the patties.

Be careful though, for thinner patties, there’s a chance that they may break while you’re pulling them apart.

After this step, you can start preparing for the next part which is grilling the burgers.

Step 2: Preheat the grill

Before grilling hamburgers—or anything else really—you should preheat your grill. The optimal temperature is medium-low or about 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step 3: Grill the frozen burgers

Now it’s time to grill burgers! Using metal flipper or spatula, place the hamburgers on the grill and flip them every 3 to 5 minutes.

Do this for about 20 to 25 minutes, depending on how thick the patties are.

If the hamburgers you bought weren’t seasoned yet, you can sprinkle some salt and pepper while it’s on the grill.

While grilling, you’ll see juices beginning to form on top of the patties. Important note: don’t grill so long that there are no juices left—Never let your burger run dry!

Pro Tip: grill with your lid open so you can monitor the patty and let the smoke out as needed. Burgers will have a bitter taste when they’ve been smoked too much.

Step 4: Check the temperature of the grilled burger

For this step, you’re going to have to check the internal temperature of your grilled burger. Doing so helps you make sure that it’s neither undercooked nor overcooked.

For a more accurate temperature reading, what you have to do is to take a single patty off the grill and put it on a clean plate. Then using your meat thermometer and check if the temperature has reached 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

If not, you can leave the burgers grilling for a few more minutes.

Step 5: Toast the buns

While you’re finishing up the hamburgers, you might want to also lightly toast the buns. Put them on the grill as well and aim to get those sides nice and crispy.

Oh, and here’s an extra tip to give your burger that extra punch: melt some butter and brush them on the buns. You’ll thank me later!

Wrapping It Up

See? Learning how to grill frozen burgers isn’t so difficult. You don’t even have to prepare anything complicated—with only the basics mentioned above, you can grill frozen patties like a champ.

So there you go! A crash course on how to grill burgers straight out of the freezer. So the next time you have friends over or when the midnight craving attacks, you won’t be frantically frustrated about those desolate patties, untouched in the freezer.