BURGER #2 - APPLE BACON STUFFED BLUE CHEESE BURGERS

I’ve reached a conclusion regarding stuffed burgers: They’re overrated. Seriously. What are you stuffing in a burger that you couldn’t just as easily put on top? Besides, why hide those goodies inside when they’d look so much better out in the open for all to see?

That was my dilemma when I made apple bacon stuffed blue cheese burgers a few days ago. I’ve tried the stuffed route before and it always turns out the same way. The two halves of the burger end up hemorrhaging their contents and/or splitting apart during the cooking process. Oh well, it all ends up in the same place, right?



Here are the main ingredients. One Fuji apple (later sliced and placed on top of the burger about a minute before coming off the grill), dried sage and thyme (added to the meat along with some S&P), crumbled blue cheese and, of course, thick cut smoked bacon. The recipe called for apple smoked bacon, but I couldn’t find it and that just seemed redundant considering an apple was already part of the formula.



Four quarter-pound patties are topped with blue cheese and another quarter pound patty was placed on top. I took my time mashing and sealing the edges to prevent separation and leakage, but it didn’t work. Also, for some reason, the inside of these burgers didn’t cook very well either. Perhaps the blue cheese altered the heat convection process somehow.



Here’s the final product. In addition to the bacon and apple, I topped the burgers with some mayo, ketchup and a spoonful of Grey Poupon coarse ground mustard between a buttered and toasted roll. Overall, the burgers were just okay. I sort of forgot that I’m not too crazy about blue cheese. Maybe it’s the moldy sweat sock taste. I’m not sure. I did like the apple though. Its crispness and sweetness provided a nice balance between the dominance of meat and cheese.

I never thought I’d say this, but for future burger recipes, I should try using less meat. Yes, less meat. Although the recipe called for half a pound of ground chuck per burger, it always seems as though the burger ends up like a meatball (maybe I need to flatten the patties more) and overwhelms the sandwich and its other content flavors. I really don’t know how Denny does it.