Return of the Belly Burger

History has a funny way of repeating itself especially when you mix the food culture from two different families.  Hop in the way back machine to the mid 80's and my parents were making stuffed hamburgers. What's a stuffed hamburger you say?  Two patties with wholesome goodness, often mushrooms and cheese stuffed in between.  The shear girth of the end burger earned them the monicker "Belly Burgers" from one of my oldest friends, Matt Oatman.  Take the Delorean with Doc Brown back to current day 2012 and Erin's Uncle Eddie is making his own version of the belly busting burger.  While we've never had Eddie's version we have heard all about them.

So how does all of this lend itself to today's culinary creation?  As usual a cocktail is involved or in this case several.  Last night's festivities with our senior circuit neighbors turned into a bit of a bender.  As such, movement was a bit slow this morning and while stalking my first cup of coffee, Erin looks at me and says, "I could really use a greasy burger."  As quick as a flash of lightning the decision had been made, time to try our hand at the Belly Burger tonight.

While I played with Margot, Erin got busy working on the stuffing.  Red and white onions and jalapeño peppers, sliced and loaded into a foil tent.  Lightly covered with olive oil, salt, black pepper and fresh garlic, she cut a few slits into the top of the foil tent and put them on the top rack in the grill.  This allowed them to cook slowly and get a nice smokey flavor.  Near the end she opened up the foil to finish the cooking.

 

Next step, the burger.  Ask any good burger maker and they'll tell you the best burgers come from 80/20 ground beef.  Yes, it's got a little more fat than ground sirloin, but a little fat yields a lot of extra flavor.  Besides you're not eating these bad boys every night of the week so live a little and make a great burger.  It's important to make fairly thin patties to work with when stuffing burgers, this allows for a fairly quick cooking of the beef without having all of your stuffing ooze out the sides.

The first patty is down with the onion and pepper mix on top.  Now it's time for cheese and in this case extra sharp cheddar cheese.

The stuffing is complete and it's time for patty number two.

Press the edges together all the way around the burger to help keep your stuffing inside this round mound of ground beef and cover both sides with salt and pepper.  Note to those scoring at home, parchment paper is a great surface to do this on.  Now it's off to a red hot grill.  The temp gauge on my grill was nearly at 600 degrees when I put the burgers on.  I did them at about 3 minutes per side to get a nice sear.  My gas grill has a very unique feature just beneath the cast iron cooking racks, grates that open and close.  Think of shutters on a window but made out of stainless steel.  When closed you are no longer cooking with direct heat under the meat.  The grates have a 1 inch gap all the way around the outside edge of the grill so the heat circulates up above the grates from around the outside edges and it cooks more like an oven this way.  After 6 minutes of searing I closed the grates and did the last 4-5 minutes oven style at around 400 degrees.  Just off the grill and resting nicely with a little extra sharp cheddar oozing out the edges.

A great burger needs the proper vessel to sail into flavor town.  Erin picked out some awesome ciabatta rolls that aren't fully baked so you finish the job at home in the over.  The end result is a nice crusty roll that can hold up to the belly busting monster shown above.

Proper pin stripes on the burger and it's decked out with a homemade chipotle mayo, some fresh peppery arugula and a couple leftover onions and jalapeños on top give it the trendy finish that a gourmet belly burger needs.

Summer is finally here.  Happy Grilling!!!