Burgers (Planning)

I'll be doing another burger night soon, so I'm working up the basic ideas for methods and ingredients. Here's what I've got so far:

1) Keep the meat in the fridge, and freeze the grinder before use.
2) Hand-mincing may actually work better than grinding.
3) The optimal mix probably involves some combination of sirloin, short rib, brisket, and oxtail. Possibly include some suet if I have any lying around.
3b) Sirloin wants to be at least 30% for texture. I'll probably start with 3:2:2:2 and go from there. Short rib's texture can help out the sirloin so I can probably up the brisket without much worry.
3c) Emphasize quality and pick out stuff that's nicely marbled. Apparently grass-fed actually might beat out grain here, but at the prices they charge that's not happening on a $5 cover.
3d) Brisket needs to be ground/chopped very fine. Short rib (and any other chuck bits) maybe not as much, unsure about oxtail and sirloin.
3e) Heston likes to salt some of the meat in advance of grinding it so it binds things better. I'll experiment with this (especially with some ground chuck eye). I'll try an hour in advance first and look into 6 depending on how it compares.
4) Handle the meat as little as possible. I plan to spread it onto plates and use a metal spatula to section off and weigh the portions, then put them on foil and shape them from the side instead of hand-forming full patties. I'll be doing a test run of this first, though.
5) Start with 6oz portions and go from there. This means I'll need to dimple the middle of each patty and make them all a bit wider than the buns
5b) OR try to reconcile the handling thing with balling them up and smashing them onto the griddle with a heavy spatula, since this maximizes the browning area.
5c) Also note that you can get away with coarser/less even work with thicker patties, since they're going to be heavier anyway.
6) Experiment with some bun recipes. I'll start with this one:
The Spotted Pig's Hamburger Buns | Serious Eats : Recipes
7) Experiment with herbs, caramelized onion extract, and tomato concentrate, but try to integrate these into the grinding process to minimize handling. Kenji likes anchovies, marmite, and dashi to boost the umami, so I might as well try with those. Mushrooms (perhaps oven-roasted) may also work here to boost the umami.
8) Flip frequently for faster cooking. This requires a good spatula.
9) Try using the same technique as the roasts - cook to the desired doneness in the oven at a low temperature, then annihilate at max in the pan to build the crust.
10) Eventually work out something on the cheese. Everyone seems to like making your own American-style cheese using sodium citrate, and Comte seems fairly popular for the flavor base. Kenji has his own trick here, which might be worth a look.
10b) Maybe use a mandolin to cut slices of conventional cheese for the time being.
11) Play around with condiments, but note that you can still get slices from the tomatoes used to make any concentrate. Play with onion slicing approaches, but Kenji likes pole-to-pole (versus orbital or chopped) for balance.

I'm looking forward to going pure IF partly because it'll let me play around with these - I can buy, section, and flash-freeze large batches of the cuts and then refine the recipes almost day by day if I want to.

Also, much as I hate straight up blogging, I've noticed that as I lose weight from my face, my cheekbones start looking more and more German.