You can consider this to be a distant continuation of my Bacon Love post since bacon is the most versatile and amazing thing in the world (okay, maybe not, but it’s pretty close.)
Last night, I was given the opportunity to make dinner for my family and my fiancee. I knew that he had been wanting a decent burger (not those nasty fast food burgers, but an actual hand-molded beef patty) for a long while, so after work, we went to the store and picked up some ground beef, bacon, Lipton Onion soup mix (this will be explained shortly), buns, and all of the other stuff you wind up buying when you go to the store (like French fries and condiments and shampoo…)
When we got home, I again forwent shedding of my dressy work clothes, and set straight to work seasoning the meat and forming big patties. I mixed in freshly ground peper and sea salt, a tad of sugar (it helps with the beautiful color and caramelized sides when you grill burgers), and a packet of the soup mix. You see, the spices in the mix and the chopped, dried onions add an entirely other dimension to the burgers! It really is spectacular. Your taste buds will rejoice.
Some people add small pieces of bacon to the beef mixture that gets formed into the hamburger patties, some people cook it separately in a pan and add it later, some people even wrap thier (raw) patties in bacon and cook. I don’t do any of these things. First of all, bacon pieces don’t crisp up when you mix them with the beef, the beef doesn’t have that delicious bacony flavor if the bacon is cooked separately, and I’m always scared the patty won’t cook all the way through which will be the result if you’re worried that your bacon is being over cooked and you take it off the heat (that, or you think that the burger is done just because the bacon on the outside is crispy and perfect–something that I’ve done before, too.)
I utelize the heat of the grill to render teh bacon fat (and 100% of the taste) into the burger. How? I place the raw bacon on top of the raw patties when I place them on the grill. When it’s time to flip the burger, I set the bacon on the grill, flip the patty, and replace the bacon. Doing this ensures that while the heat of the grill melts the fat onto and into the burger (I always close the lid so that the burgers cook faster), and since you place it on the grill every time you flip, you ensure that the bacon is getting nice and crispy!
Sizzling, bacony goodness, right there!
When the patties are done, I place them on a metal cookie sheet, but since I like my bacon crispy, I take it off of the burgers while they sit and leave them on the grill for a few minutes, or at least until they are crispy to my liking. You can add cheese or smother them in caramelized onions or load them up with whatever else you like, but this is the best bacon burger ever–hands down. I wasn’t able to get a picture of the burger once it was done grilling because I forgot. The burger was too tempting; I didn’t have the willpower to remember to take a picture since my stomach aparently took the place of my brain for a moment, but just imagine a big, juicy patty with a nice cruncy pile of bacon sitting on top on a bun surrounded by a moat of French fried and ketchup. Doesn’t that just make you drool?
Now that you’re probably craving this bad boy, go make one! Thanks for reading!
~Love Lindi
