You might have missed the boat on making these for Memorial Day, but you should definitely pick up the ingredients for your next summer barbecue or put them on the menu for your July 4th celebration. After seeing a few viral videos detailing “beer can burgers” last week, Josh and I decided to try our hand at something similar to celebrate the holiday. We have been eating VERY clean the last ten days and wanted to steer clear of junk food on Monday, even though we knew there would be plenty of it. We did add cheese and their *might* have been a box of Krispy Kreme donuts somewhere around the pool, but I’m pretty proud of us for not over-indulging.
INGREDIENTS
2 pounds of ground chuck, or your ground meat of choice
8 slices of bacon
8 slices of smoked gouda
red and green bell peppers
white onion
chives
minced garlic
olive oil
salt & pepper
a can or bottle
Serving: 4 burgers
Time: 1 hour prep time, 1 hour & 20 minute cook time
And let’s face it. It doesn’t hurt to have a pool in the background.
First up is the veggies. My plan was to slice these on the mandolin to get them very thin, but then I found myself at the pool shortly after breakfast and I didn’t want to pack up my entire kitchen. I just sliced them as thin as I could with a knife and it worked out just fine. I used one red bell pepper, one green bell pepper and half of a white onion.
I used an electric skillet since I wasn’t in the kitchen, but any pan will do. Put a few tablespoons of olive oil and a teaspoon of minced garlic in the pan on high heat. I was cooking at about 375*. Once the garlic is nice and brown, toss in your peppers and onions and cover.
While my veggies were getting nice and brown, I started forming the burgers. Using a half-pound each of ground meat {you read that correctly, these burgers were HUGE}, form the meat into a large ball. I recommend adding salt and pepper {and any other spices you’d like to use} to your meat mixture before forming the burgers.
Using a can or bottle {this is a milk bottle from Target}, make a deep hole in the center of your meat and use your hands to form the burger into a donut shape around it. Gently pull out your bottle, leaving a nice big “bowl” of meat. The bottom of the “bowl” is about a half inch thick. I wrapped two slices of bacon around each burger, squeezing them a little to hold it in place.
If you are following a strict paleo or Whole30 eating plan, just substitute the regular bacon for sugar-free bacon and skip the cheese. We love smoked gouda, but since it’s almost $13 a pound, we don’t buy it very often. I had the deli cut 8 thick slices and it was a little over a quarter pound. This is seriously the BEST. CHEESE. EVER. Place one slice in the bottom of each burger, however you can get it to fit.
At this point, your veggies are probably pretty much perfect. I tossed in some chopped chives and gave it one last stir before taking them off the heat. After cooking for 15-20 minutes, they were crispy and brown on the bottom and had very little crunch left.
Using tongs, I filled each burger with as much of the veggie mixture as I could fit. My dad was thrilled that there was a bit left over, it ended up being perfect to top our other grilled items later on in the day!
You can go ahead and add another slice of cheese on top at this point, if you’d like!
Since we knew these were going to take a while to cook, we left the cheese off the top until the burgers were almost completely ready. We cooked them on a gas grill, covered, for a little over an hour. Since you can’t flip them, we browned them and then put them on top of aluminum foil to keep them from getting overdone on the bottom. Using the tongs, we could press on the burgers every 20 minutes or so to test how firm they were. Once they were almost done, we added a piece of cheese on top and let it melt for 15 more minutes.
Yes, these took quite awhile to cook, so I don’t recommend them for a Tuesday night dinner. BUT, since we were outside anyway, enjoying the pool and family, it was pretty fun to watch and wait on our little experiment to finish up. We were salivating by the time we pulled them from the grill and they did not disappoint!
I’ll admit that I didn’t come anywhere close to eating an entire burger in one sitting, but my dad and Josh both cleaned their plates! These were delicious and there are so many ways to customize them, depending on the veggies you love! I think next time around I’ll fry up some bacon and crumble it up inside the burger with the veggies. I prefer my bacon crispy and I think that would be delicious. I think these might even be delicious stuffed with homemade pimento cheese?!
Let me know if you give these Stuffed Burgers a try! I would love to know what all you filled them with. Any other summer grill ideas I need to know about? There is nothing better that a dinner cooked outside.
