How to Make Stuffed Burgers

For these burgers, you’ll need ground meat, garlic powder, salt, fresh pepper, bacon bits, feta cheese, and cream cheese. Now, you can use any type of ground meat that you want – beef, veal (too expensive for my blood), turkey, chicken, or just about anything you can think up. As far as the cheeses go, I used these because that’s what I had. You could use ANY type of cheese – bleu cheese, goat cheese (YUM!), cheddar, mozzarella – let your imagination run wild. Try to pair things together. I used bacon, but you could use pepperoni, or anything else you think might pair well with the cheese you’re using.  To make a pizza burger, use mozzarella and chopped pepperoni.  The burger is your canvas!

Take your meat and make it into really thin patties. If you’re using 1 pound of meat, a serving for 4 people, then you’ll make 8 thin patties. I was only using ½ pound of meat so I made four. However many burgers you want, double that and you’ll have your thin patty number. Press them down really good so the meat sticks together. No one wants a burger that falls apart on the grill – except maybe your dog.

Mix up your filling in a small dish or measuring cup. I mixed the cream cheese, feta, and bacon up. I had to nuke the cream cheese a second to get it soft enough to stir.

On half of your burgers, you will put a big dab of filling. Make sure it’s in the center. We don’t want it oozing out. However, oozing cheese is not a bad thing. Yum, oozing cheese! Just dwell on that a minute and let the love of cheese take you away! Back to the burgers.

Ok, take your thin patties that you left plain and place them over the filled patties. Press down the edges to make sure you get a good seal. We want the cheese to stay inside! It’s a burger prison. Once I had a good seal around the edges, I pressed mine down all over. I don’t like fat patties. Fat patties, fat patties, pat fatties. Sorry, that was just fun to say! Say it.

You’ll want to season your burgers. Normally I just use seasoned salt, but for the feta cheese I wanted to use garlic. A burger isn’t good unless you use salt. Trust me on this one. If you leave salt off your burger before you cook it, it won’t be good. Do you wonder why people always say no when you invite them over to grill? It’s because you don’t use salt for Pete’s sake! Buy a canister of salt and make your family happy. Thank you. Oh, and fresh ground pepper helps too.

Throw your hamburgers on a grill heated to medium. Don’t worry about rain unless you’ve invited Kim Anderson over. Close the lid and let them cook for about 7 minutes. I always cook mine a LONG time because I hate red hamburger meat. If I get red hamburger meat on my burger, you can be sure I’m gonna gag, maybe even throw up. I think mine cooked for 8-9 minutes.

Flip the burgers. See the nice pretty grill marks? They’re smelling delicious. The neighbors are jealous. Invite them over and tell them you used salt. They’ll need to cook about 7 more minutes on that side.

When they’re done, you pull them off the grill and assemble with your favorite ingredients. I used lettuce, tomato, pickle, mayo, and mustard.  See, wasn’t that EASY!?! You can do it. Amaze your family. They’ll think you’ve been watching The Food Network again.

Here is the center. See the nice pretty cheese? Ohhhhhh baby! Embrace the cheese……and salt too.