Onion Bacon Burger with Chipotle Cheese Sauce

How about a great burger packed with bacon and smothered with grilled onions and a zesty Chipotle Cheese Sauce? Patti made up some burgers and mixed chopped bacon into them. Just added tons of that smoky bacon flavors.

Smoked it all on the grill and it was Hamburger Heaven!

Tonight, to add a little more “special”, we made a little Chipotle Cheddar Cheese Sauce.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes smoke, 30 minutes @ 300

Grill: Royall Wood Pellet Grill/Smoker

Pellets: Hickory

Ingredients:

2 lbs. lean ground beef 80/20

1/2 lb. bacon, limp cooked and chopped

2 eggs, severely beaten

¼ cup crushed dried garlic

1 tsp. coarse black pepper

1 T. Country Bob’s Seasoning Salt

1 cup Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce

Buns of choice (onion buns here)

Condiments of choice

Cut the bacon with kitchen shears.

Directions:

Cook the bacon until it is just done, still limp and juicy. Then, cut it into bite sized pieces. We used kitchen shears for this. It is easier and quicker than using a knife. Put everything in a large bowl and mix well. Now, you can either return your meat to the refrigerator or make your patties first then into the fridge. You want to give your seasonings time to blend. Also, burgers are best grilled right out of the fridge, they hold together better, unlike steak that you grill at room temperature.

Slice the sweet onions (large cut) and place them on a griddle on top of the grill grate with a drizzle of olive oil. Pull them when they are soft and pile them onto your burgers.

Cast Iron Griddle on the Royall

Almost Ready

Cooking Directions: Royall 3000 Wood Pellet Grill/Smoker

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 SMOKER!!! USE IT… I 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 natural wood pellets and they come in lots of flavors. We love that everything Royall sells is made in the U.S.A., not China like some wood pellet grills.

Place burgers and the griddle with the onions directly onto 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 165 degrees. 30 minutes of smoking is not enough to have any cooking effect on your meat. But, it is enough to open up the pores so that the meat can pick up all the flavor of the smoke.

After 30 minutes, turn the digital control up to 350 degrees and pull the meat off the grill unless you like it well done.

Stir the onions and let them go for another 15-20 minutes stirring now and then so they don’t stick to the griddle and burn.

 When the onions start to get soft, put the meat back onto the center of the grill and cook until you reach your desired doneness. For big burgers, like this, I like to give them about 5 minutes a side. This will be about medium rare.

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. Also you are only smoking at temps less than 250 degrees, anything higher is cooking and there will not be much if any smoke so it does not matter what kind of pellet you are using.

Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 30 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 medium heat here for about 15 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.

Onion Bacon Burger with Chipotle Cheese Sauce

About Our Recipes

We do our recipes on our patio where we have a lineup of grills, including Traeger, Charmglow, Char-Broil, Brinkman and Weber. I call it our “Wall of Grill”. Our grilling styles 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….

Enjoy,

Ken & Patti

http://datenightdoins.com

Al Malekovic makes a fine all purpose sauce. Patti uses it for seasoning all kinds of things, but I like it on burgers and steaks. “Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce” comes in lots of great flavors.

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   or email   Al@countrybobs.com