The Bacon Buster Burger

If you have looked at many of our recipes by now you may have noticed we really like bacon. I am always thinking of ways to use bacon in or on something. Our niece Pebble says “It’s the Perfect Food Group”. I saw the Bacon Marmalade on Char-Broil’s site “Sizzle on the Grill”.
http://www.charbroil.com/sizzle/ I had to make some with a few changes, of course. We added lots of garlic and sweet onion.

This burger was busting at the seams with layers of flavor all wrapped in smoky bacon and smothered in cheese. We severed this with grill fries and bacon wrapped elephant garlic. I am looking forward to the next one.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes

Grill: Royall 3000 Wood Pellet Grill

Pellets: Hickory

Ingredients:

2 lbs. ground sirloin or 80/20 (any leaner and you have DRY BURGERS)

¾ lb. bacon, cooked and drained

2 eggs, well beaten

Cheese of choice, we picked a couple of slices of Swiss

1 sweet onion, chopped

¼ cup crushed dried garlic

½ tsp. black pepper

1 tsp. Country Bob’s Seasoning Salt

1 cup Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce

Buns of choice (potato buns here)

Condiments of choice

Directions: Meat

Mix the beef, eggs, garlic, onion, pepper, Country Bob’s Seasoning Salt and Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce in a bowl. Make your patties either by hand or use a press. Tonight we did it by hand. Ken likes the press because they’re a more uniform size. Patti likes to hand form hers, she likes to guarantee hers are rare. We like big burgers, so make 2 patties for every burger.

Then, take one patty and spread a thick layer of your bacon marmalade on it. Now, take the second patty and press the 2 of them together. Press firmly and work the seams so your bacon marmalade doesn’t run out while cooking. (You can find our bacon marmalade recipe and a video on our web site.)

Put the patties back into the fridge until you are ready to put them on. (You grill hamburger patties COLD, the patties hold together better. Unlike steak, that goes on at room temp so it cooks more evenly.)

On The Royall 3000 Wood Pellet Grill/Smoker

Cooking Directions: Royall Wood Pellet Grill

Open the lid and set the dial to “Smoke”, after about five minutes shut the lid. Give it about 10 minutes to heat up. Patti has lined the drip pan with foil for me, it makes for easier clean up.

The Royall is a top of the line SMOKER!!! USE IT… We SMOKE everything for 30 minutes before I put any heat under it. It is just magic what the smoke does to your food. The Royall uses 100 % hardwood pellets and they come in 14 different all natural woods. All made in the U.S.A. Feel free to mix or match to make your own blend. We use the Royall house blend a lot, hickory, oak and cherry.

Place the burgers directly onto the center of the grill and just let it hang out in the smoke and get happy for 30 minutes or so. This is referred to as “smoking”; the temperature is around 125-165 degrees. 30 minutes of smoking is not enough to have any cooking effect on your meat. But, it is enough to open the pores up so that the meat can pick up all the flavor of the smoke.

After 30 minutes, turn the digital control up to 350 degrees or medium and pull the meat off the grill.

When the grill comes up to temperature put the meat back onto the grill and cook until you reach your desired doneness. For big burgers, like this, I like to give them about 8 minutes a side. This will be about medium rare. Keep in mind that with a Royall Pellet Grill you do not need to turn things because it cooks like a convection oven. I like too though because I like the grill marks and then add sauce to where I want it.

The last 5 minutes I added a thick layer of bacon and cheese for another layer of flavor, and closed the hood; it will melt in a minute or so.

The Bacon Buster Burger

Let’s eat! Prepare your bun, add the patty and pile it high with lettuce and tomato. Layers of good smoky flavors, it’s all really, really good.

Note: I get a lot of questions about the kind of pellets you can use with a recipe. Keep in mind that a recipe is just an outline. Some you need follow closely like when you are making bread, but most you can do anything you can dream, our favorite way to cook. Feel free to mix and match the pellets until you find a combination you really like.

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Grill: Gas Medium Indirect Heat

Preparing Grill: Medium Indirect Heat

Preheat your grill to medium heat (300 - 350) and turn off one side so you will be cooking with indirect heat. Add your wet hickory chips over the fire and oil the grill. A cooking spray is easiest for this. (Note: you can add your hickory directly to the grill or you can use foil smoke packets.(Two handfuls wet chips and one dry, fold foil into a packet, poke holes in it with a fork and you’re good to go.)

Note: I use a spray bottle when cooking on the grill filled with a Worcestershire sauce and liquid smoke mix that keeps things moist and adds tons of flavors. (Mix is 3 parts Worcestershire with 1 part liquid smoke)

Preparing Charcoal Grill

Medium Indirect Heat

Get the Grill ready, you will want your temperature of around 300-350 degrees. Remember, you are going high heat here for about 10 minutes. Bank your coals over to one side of your grill. Add your “drained wood chips” and you are good to go. Your cooking times and temps will be the same as above.

Cooking In the Oven:

We have been getting requests for recipe conversions for the oven. I tell folks all the time that cooking on a Royall wood pellet grill is just as easy as cooking in your oven. Just about anyone can do it and do it well. Think about it. You set your control knob to the temp you want, put your meat in and leave it for a set time.

It is the same thing, time and temp. is what it is all about. The Royall is just like your oven except it uses wood pellets and has wheels.

If you want to smoke in your oven they sell oven smokers for that. I, myself, would not spend the money on one of those when you can make your own out of foil.

Foil smoke packets. (Two handfuls wet chips and one dry, fold foil into a packet, poke holes in it with a fork and you’re good to go.) Just set it in the oven. You might want to make sure you turn on your vent fan or your house will fill up with smoke. You will give your alarms a good work out.

About our Recipes

We do our recipes on our patio where we have a lineup of grills, including Royall Wood Pellet Grill/Smoker, Traeger, Char Griller side box smoker, Charmglow, Char-Broil, The Big Easy, Brinkman and Weber. I call it our “Wall of Grill”. Our grilling styles are healthy and low fat and will fit pellet heads, gas, natural wood and even charcoal purists. Almost any of our recipes can be done on any kind of good BBQ.

The important thing to keep in mind is TIME & TEMPERATURE. You can even do some of them in the oven or crock pot, but, then you lose all the flavors you get from cooking outdoors. But sometimes it does rain.

Remember that a recipe is simply an outline; it is not written in stone. Don’t be afraid to make changes to suit your taste.

Take it and run with it….

Live Your Passion…

Enjoy,

Ken & Patti

http://datenightdoins.com

Al Malekovic makes a fine all purpose sauce. Patti uses it for seasoning all kinds of things, even scrambled eggs. But, I like it on burgers and steaks. “Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce”

Check it out, for a free bottle go to his web site or email him. If you email him, tell him that you saw it here and we used it all up and to send us more...

www.countrybobs.com    Al@countrybobs.com