ultimate burgers
Several years ago, Grant picked out pre-made “ultimate burgers” at Whole Foods for his birthday dinner. They were for sure delicious, but I quickly figured out that we could make them ourselves with better meat and making them even more ultimate. We’ve been making them just about once a week every summer ever since. The recipe below is our go-to, but feel free to experiment based on what you have on hand/what’s in season.
Ingredients
- 1 pound ground pastured beef
- 1 pound ground pastured pork*
- 3-4 slices of bacon (uncooked), finely diced
- 1 onion, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 jalapeno pepper, chopped finely
- 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (or soy sauce)
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1-2 tsp freshly ground pepper
- 1 cup or so of mozzarella or brie, chopped into chunks
Instructions
- Dump all of the ingredients except for the cheese into a large bowl. Mix everything thoroughly with your hands. Let sit for at least twenty minutes or up to four hours, so the flavors meld together.
- Assemble the burgers. We like more of the slider-size (using pretzel buns or those small Hawaiian rolls - both of which we get at Costco), but make your burgers the size you want to use. Using the pictures below to guide you, assemble the meat mixture around your chunk of cheese. This is a very technical process, as you can see!
- Pop them on the grill. You'll want to cook based on how well done you want them and based on the specifics of your grill. Grant usually grills these with some hickory chips for that extra smoky flavor.
Notes
A Sara by the Season original.
Other options for add-ins: sweet peppers, chipotle peppers and sauce, shredded cheddar cheese instead of mozzarella or brie, finely diced mushrooms, shredded herbs. Be creative!
*You can use any mix of ground meat, but I like the pork/beef combo because pastured ground beef is pretty lean, so the pork (and bacon) adds some extra fat and flavor.
We looove mozzarella or brie in the middle of the burgers because it gets all melty and gooey and extra delicious. If we don’t have mozzarella or brie around, we shred some shard cheddar (which we almost always have on hand) and mix it in the burger mix instead. Here’s how Grant does it after thoroughly mixing the meat mixture together with his hands:
Assemble the burgers based on the size you want (see recipe for notes on sizing).
Create a little well for the cheese, plop the cheese in there, and then…
Cover up the cheese with some additional meat mixture.
Make some ultimate burgers for your next cookout!
