Should I apply pressure occasionally to a burger when I'm cooking it?

Are you going for an ISO standard maillard reaction?

You should know that "sealing" the meat is a fallacy. When you heat meat enough to get a maillard reaction, the proteins tighten up and effectively squeeze liquid out from the meat.

Minced meat has exposed more surface area, and this will cause more fluid to be released. Squeezing or pressing the pattie causes this fluid to escape.

No doubt you've heard of resting meat. This allows the proteins to relax and provides room for the internal fluids to redistribute.

A better approach is to sous vide the meat, then finish it off with a very hot pan to get a maillard reaction ok the surface without significantly heating the rest of the meat.

With a whole piece of meat it is safe to sous vide the meat at (say) 55.5C for 25 hours or so because bacteria Will be mostly on the outside of the meat which will get hot enough fast enough to stop cell division. This is not true of minced meat, so a higher temperature is required (or you need to take more care and accept a higher risk).

I'm not a specialist in ISO, IEEE, or even MSA, but hopefully this will help.

 

Do you mean that the presence of my tongue being firmly implanted in one cheek was not-obvious?

 

Did I say implanted? I meant "pressed" :-D