Chesterfield welcomed hungry crowds last weekend at the 10th annual Taste of St. Louis festival. People enjoyed tried-and-true festival favorites throughout the three-day affair, including chef battles, artist booths and the popular Sauce Magazine Restaurant Row featuring offerings from local restaurants. Despite  controversial opinion from longtime festival attendees, displeased with the new venue, the turnout was fantastic. The Taste of St. Louis has historically taken place downtown. This year welcomed a new location in Chesterfield, along with the addition of ticketed shows on the Chesterfield Bud Light Amphitheater Stage. Although Taste of St. Louis has always been free, this new addition offered festival-goers the opportunity to purchase general admission or VIP tickets to experience food demonstrations by Food Network celebrities.

One such Food Network Celebrity that made an appearance was Chef Tyler Florence, host of “The Great Food Truck Race” and “Food Court Wars.” He started off Friday night with a live cooking demonstration. Grabbing audience members’ attention by casually stating, “We’ve invented a bread that bypasses the organic process of going through yeast,” Florence proceeded to bake hamburger buns onstage in less than 20 minutes. Stirring together potato starch, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, organic dried milk and some salt as a base, he then infused the mixture with carbon dioxide and poured it directly into some circular molds placed on a griddle. As his innovative hamburger buns baked, Florence discussed his thoughts on creating the ideal grind for a hamburger.

“A really great burger is about a couple of things. It’s about flavor and it’s about a fat-to-lean ratio,” Florence explained, going on to cite a fifty-fifty mixture of ground short rib and chuck as the best combination to heat up on the griddle. Justifying his claim with a description of the softness and texture of the chuck paired with the flavor and fat from ground short rib, Florence even shared that he and his crew had eaten an entire cow in order to reach this beefy conclusion.

After blending together this fifty-fifty mixture, and taking care not to over-mash the meat and accidentally soften it, Florence then opted to cook his burgers on a griddle as opposed to grilling them. He shared his thoughts on cooking burgers properly and explained the Maillard Reaction, where amino acids and carbohydrates actually melt and form that crisp, caramelized burger exterior people crave. He also changed up traditional burger cooking with his use of grapeseed oil, explaining how olive oil has a specific flavor and taste, while grapeseed oil is much more neutral and has a higher smoke point to move the caramelization process along much more efficiently.

After laying his burger patties on the griddle, Florence took a moment to check on his revolutionary burger buns, Florence shared how his perfect burger bun ideally would have “plenty of nooks and crannies to smear goop into,” as he transitioned into the next part of his cooking demonstration – creating the ultimate burger sauce. Tossing together some parsley, capers, roasted garlic and sweet pickle relish, he added some mayonnaise, ketchup, dijon mustard and some salt into the mixture to create a pink-tinted sauce he lovingly referred to as “goop” for the remainder of the demonstration. Adding this “goop” on top of his caramelized burger patties and game-changing burger buns, Florence offered up his culinary creation for audience members, even passing the plate out into the crowd for people to share.

Throughout his cooking demonstration, Florence welcomed crowd participation, asking for thoughts on “The Great Food Truck Race” as well as encouraging audience questions. Although he refrained from spilling “The Great Food Truck Race” winners, he  shared his personal culinary journey, jokingly describing how he learned how to cook in the “school of hot stoves” and then sharing how he actually attended school in Charleston, South Carolina and then moved to New York city in 1994, eventually joining the Food Network a couple years later.

Duff Goldman, “Ace of Cakes” host, also made a surprise appearance on stage, exchanging some laughs with Florence and stealing some food tidbits before making his exit. Festival attendees got to experience a pastry demonstration from Goldman the next night, followed by a performance by The Urge, a local band. Florence’s own cooking demonstration was followed up by some hits from the band Big Head Todd and the Monsters. A fireworks display ended the evening.