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Habanero Bacon Cheeseburgers and Other Stuff


 
Cliff Bartlett

Cliff Bartlett

R.I.P. 5/17/2021
Had a nice weeks vacation to Southern Oregon so haven't done any cooks for a while. Been following the board on my laptop/phone though. Got back in the groove yesterday with a busy day in the kitchen and outside. Several weeks ago I saw a recipe for Habanero Bacon Cheeseburgers and had to give it a go. It's from Ballistic BBQ. I love heat and this looked right up my alley. Also, I've been marinating some bottom round for three days and got that on the WSM yesterday morning as well. Haven't had any Jerky in a while. Used Kevin Taylor's recipe from this site. Did a loaf of bread, not for this cook, but for a meal my wife's making tomorrow. Finally, expecting extreme heat on the burger, I made a cucumber salad to side things up. Went a little nuts with the pictures. Here goes.

Used a four line snake for the jerky.



Got the smoker up to 170 degrees with some chunks of hickory. Added a third grate and got it loaded up. It started pouring rain as soon as I got the meat on. It rained heavily at times all day. My kind of weather.



Found these thin cut ribeyes at Walmart. Nothing great, but will work well for the burger.



In the grinder they go.





Had just under 14 ounces of burger. Wife's patty was 6 oz., mine was 8 oz.



Quick cucumber salad.



Got to work on the Habanero Sauce for the burger. My wife passed on the Habanero sauce, so I sautéed up some jalapenos for her a little later in the cook.



Hadn't looked at the jerky in five hours. Took a peek. Needs another hour.



Here are the ingredients for the habanero sauce. In addition to the peppers, I added chopped sweet onion, two cloves of garlic, AC Vinegar, granulated sugar and some salt.

 
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Pulled the jerky after six hours. Plenty of snake left so I kept it going to keep my sauce and the sautéed onions and bacon warm.



Used my JJ to sautee the habaneros and diced onion and garlic cloves. Didn't want to do this step in the house.



After about 15 minutes I added the vinegar, sugar and salt, stirred and pulled from heat.



Coals were still plenty hot so I threw on my Kettle Q. Sauteed the sliced onion and bacon.





All the saute work done.



After the habanero sauce cooled for about half hour, I poured everything into our blender to complete sauce.



A shot of the bread for my wife's dinner tomorrow.



Moved over to my red kettle and got the burgers on.



Flipped and moved up to flat surface to finish off.

 
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Added about two tablespoons of the sauce to my burger and topped with a slice of deli cheddar.



Toasted the buns, Onion Rolls, on the griddle surface too.



Topped burger with the sliced onion/bacon mix.



Plated shots.





First and foremost, this burger was fantastic. As I mentioned I'm into heat, but I must admit I was a little nervous with this habanero sauce. It was indeed hot, but not what I expected. On my heat scale I would call this sauce medium. It's kind of a sneaky heat that builds several seconds after eaten, but it's not one of nuclear heats that overrides the flavor of everything else. I ate every bite of my burger and came away wishing I'd used a little more of the sauce. The recipe called for a couple of slices of avocado too. I'd picked up a couple a few days before the cook and they got too dark and mushy to use. Just a note on Kevin's Jerky Recipe. It is excellent and is some of the best tasting jerky I've made. It's pretty salty, but I think that's my doing. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of salt for 5# of meat, plus 2 Tbsp. Yum Yum Steak Seasoning. I'd never heard of Yum Yum Steak Seasoning and knew I'd never find it up here, so I substituted Montreal Steak for the Yum Yum. Montreal SS is loaded with salt so that probably was the culprit. I'm a salt freak too so I'm sure I'll eat every piece of it. Already off to a good start. Anyway, this was a fun cook and I will be making this recipe again, soon. I apologize for the heavy picture content in advance. Have a great, safe Halloween everyone. Thanks for looking.
 
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Wholly cow!!!! Now that's what I'm talking about. You did it all in those cooks. Save this for when we visit :)
 
Fantastic looking burger and bread. Unfortunately I can no longer tolerate really hot foods. But if I could I would, back in the day I would have loved to try that burger.
Is that a Forkish bread?
 
Man that burger looks delicious but a little to hot for me. Love the onions and bacon together, will do that on our next burgers.
 
Everything looks great Cliff!

I need to take some time and make some bread, and jerky! My Forkish book is getting dusty!
 
Cliff, everything looks wonderful, as usual. I have a plant full of habanero's and another full of ghost peppers. I think I'm going to ship you some ghost peppers so you can take that heat index to the next level.
 
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