Why You Should Try Smoked Bacon Burger Recipe
- The most important reason to try this recipe – Being blown away after taking your first bite and then devouring the rest of this remarkably delicious bacon burger! The combination of the bold ground chuck, with the addition of the seasonings, and the porky goodness of the bacon is such a superb culinary match that you can’t often find in an ordinary hamburger.
- Easy and fun to prepare – Do you love bacon? Do you dream of the next time you will eat bacon? Then what could be better than mixing cooked bacon into ground meat with your hands and then wrapping the burger in three slices of bacon? Talk about bacon heaven! It can’t get better than this!
- Easy to smoke – This is literally one of the easiest recipes to smoke with your offset smoker. It takes just 1 hour to smoke your bacon burgers. And you don’t need to flip them or move them around. Keep your offset smoker temperature at roughly 250 and place the cheese on at the end. “Et voila!” Time to eat!
Ingredients For Smoked Bacon Burger
Recipe is for 4 eight-ounce bacon burgers
- 2 pounds ground chuck
- 8 strips of cooked bacon, coarsely chopped
- 2 tablespoons garlic powder
- 2 tablespoons onion powder
- 2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 12 strips uncooked bacon for wrapping
- 8 ounces sliced smoked Gouda cheese
- 4 good sized hamburger buns
How To Make A Burger On Your Smoker
1. Bring your offset smoker to temperature – You will want to maintain a temperature of roughly 250 degrees throughout the entire smoking process.
2. Prepare the burger – With your hands, mix the ground chuck, cooked bacon, garlic powder, onion powder, Italian seasoning, and Worcestershire sauce. Make four equal-sized, eight-ounce burger patties.
3. Wrap the burger with the uncooked bacon – Place three strips of bacon on a cutting board, laid out next to each other. Place a burger in the middle of the three strips of bacon. Bring the top of each bacon strip to the middle of the burger, and then bring the bottom of each bacon strip to the middle of the burger. Flip the burger over so the joining bacon pieces are on the bottom. This is how you will place the burger on the offset smoker. Repeat with the three remaining burgers.
4. Place the burgers onto the smoker – Place the burgers on the 8” x 10” wire oven rack and place it onto your offset smoker. Smoke until the internal temperature reaches 120 for rare or 130 for medium rare, roughly 1 hour depending on the thickness of your burgers.
5. Place the smoked Gouda cheese on the burgers – Just as your burgers are reaching your desired temperature, place two slices of Gouda cheese on each burger and allow the cheese to melt.
6. Remove the burger from the smoker – After the cheese has melted, remove the burgers from the offset smoker. Add any toppings and condiments that you desire.
Variations And Substitutions For Offset Smoker Bacon Burger
- What type of ground meat should I use? – We used ground chuck for our bacon burger in this recipe. Ground chuck comes from the cow’s shoulder, which has a good ratio of lean meat to fat. We used an 80% lean with a 20% fat combination. Try adding sirloin cuts (like top sirloin or tri-tip), which are well-marbled and have an outstanding beefy flavor, to the ground chuck for a winning flavor combination. And just a FYI, if the package of ground meat you’re buying at your grocery store is labeled “ground hamburger,” it is the trimmings and leftovers of other types of meat that have been cut and ground.
- Try using other ingredient mixtures in the burger – We have found that the combination of the onion and garlic powder, Italian seasoning, Worcestershire sauce, and bacon is a perfect blend for this burger. But feel free to add any other ingredients you would like to the burger. Try adding chopped onions, chopped shallots, dry onion soup mix, BBQ sauce, sriracha or hoisin sauce (for an Asian flare), teriyaki sauce, horseradish sauce, and any dried or fresh herbs you desire.
- Experiment with burger condiments, toppings, and buns – We intentionally left these ingredients out of the recipe because we believe these burger additions are strictly a personal choice. We added mayonnaise, pickle stackers, and thin sliced red onion to our bacon burger because that is what we like. We used a brioche hamburger bun as well. Please add any condiments, toppings, and burger bun type you prefer and enjoy.
Tips And Tricks For Offset Smoker Burger
Use a smaller fire to smoke your burger – The bacon burger takes less time on the offset smoker than a larger cut of meat like brisket, or a more complicated cut like pork ribs. So, the fire in your firebox that creates the smoke can be substantially smaller and thus easier to handle than a larger fire. You don’t need a giant fire to smoke such a small portion of meat.
How to mix and form your burger – If you want your bacon burger to be moist and juicy, be sure not to over-mix or handle your burger too much. Too much mixing will create a dense, cement-like burger texture once the burger is cooked. As you mix and form the burger with your hands, try not to press, compact, or squeeze it, but gently mix and form it with your hands.
Using an 8” x 10” wire oven rack and a drip pan – Placing your burger on the wire oven rack ensures that the burger will not sag into and between the grill grates, and it’s much easier to move the burger around and on and off the smoker. And placing an aluminum drip pan under the burger on the ash tray to catch the drippings will help when it comes to clean up. Just toss it away!
Smoked Bacon Burger
Equipment
- 1 Offset smoker
- 1 Charcoal Chimney Fire Starter
- 1 8" x 10" Wire Oven Rack
- 1 Disposable Aluminum Drip Pan
- 1 BBQ Tongs
Ingredients
Recipe is for 4 eight-ounce bacon burgers
- 2 pounds ground chuck
- 8 strips cooked bacon, coarsely chopped
- 2 tablespoons garlic powder
- 2 tablespoons onion powder
- 2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 12 strips uncooked bacon for wrapping
- 8 ounces sliced smoked Gouda cheese
- 4 buns hamburger, good-sized
Instructions
- Bring your offset smoker to temperature – You will want to maintain a temperature of roughly 250 degrees throughout the entire smoking process.
- Prepare the burger – With your hands, mix the ground chuck, cooked bacon, garlic powder, onion powder, Italian seasoning, and Worcestershire sauce. Make four equal-sized, eight-ounce burger patties.
- Wrap the burger with the uncooked bacon – Place three strips of bacon on a cutting board, laid out next to each other. Place a burger in the middle of the three strips of bacon. Bring the top of each bacon strip to the middle of the burger, and then bring the bottom of each bacon strip to the middle of the burger. Flip the burger over so the joining bacon pieces are on the bottom. This is how you will place the burger on the offset smoker. Repeat with the three remaining burgers.
- Place the burgers onto the smoker – Place the burgers on the 8” x 10” wire oven rack and place it onto your offset smoker. Smoke until the internal temperature reaches 120 for rare or 130 for medium rare, roughly 1 hour depending on the thickness of your burgers.
- Place the smoked Gouda cheese on the burgers – Just as your burgers are reaching your desired temperature, place two slices of Gouda cheese on each burger and allow the cheese to melt.
- Remove the burger from the smoker – After the cheese has melted, remove the burgers from the offset smoker. Add any toppings and condiments that you desire.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
