Bacon & Cheese Smashburger Sliders with Secret Sauce

This Labor Day I want to give you a dish that will satisfy your burger jones. I love hamburgers. They are so easy, yet they are so perfect. Meat and bread. The simplicity allows for such greatness.

Nowadays most people don’t always want to invest in a whole burger. They want a slider, basically a mini burger. These aren’t just your typical sliders either, these are SMAAAAASHBURGERS!!! Notice the emphasis on the smash.

So what in the name of Ronald MACKdonald is a smashburger if you haven’t been privy to such an item, you are missing out. It’s a burger that is smashed against a hot griddle creating an awesome juicy crust on your burger. But how do you smash?

With a burger smasher (Lodge LGPR3 Pre-Seasoned Round Cast-Iron Grill Press). I didn’t own one, so I had to go out and get one. These things are awesome. You actually eat less meat in the process because this will smash a smaller quantity of meat into a delicious thin patty.

Basically how it works is, you form your burger into about a 2-3 Oz. meatball, then you add it to a super hot cast iron/or something that is not a non-stick pan. As soon as you do that, you bring in Sgt. Smash (yeah I already named it, Sgt. Smash is bad ass.) You press down good ole’ sarge onto your ball as hard as you can (HAHAHA OMG I can’t even…). The end result is a perfectly flat and delicious burger patty.

Now I know for Labor Day you are typically grilling, but I have that covered for tomorrow. I actually prefer a pan fried burger. It has so much more flavor in my opinion. Especially for a slider, if you make it flat on a grill you run the risk of drying out the meat.

Now the keys to any good burger are the following: high quality meat, great bread, and a solid topping.

I’m not going to attempt to make my own meat blend, the germaphobe in me just thinks that my food processor will be forever unclean. So I always go with a 80-20 blend from my local butcher. It does the trick without any fuss of making my own blend.

My bread comes from the local bakery that makes unreal challah bread rolls. These are the perfect compliment to the meat. I used to always like to use potato bread, but because of the strange ingredients that show up in potato rolls I decided to switch to these rolls a year ago, and I’m very pleased with that decision. They are squishy and slightly sweet. Perfect for a slider.

Now the topping, as you can see by the title, I’m adding cheese to these burgers to complete the perfection. I like to use a sharp white cheddar cheese. I like to add bacon to it, because why not? And I like to finish it off with a nice ketchup/mayo spread/diced dill pickles (my secret sauce, whoops!)

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Recipe

Ingredients

1 Lb. Ground Beef 80/20 minimum (better if its 70/30)

1 Onion

2 Tsp. Salt

1 Tsp. Pepper

1 Clove Garlic

1 Tbsp. Soy Sauce

1 Tbsp. Worcestershire Sauce

8 Strips of Crispy Bacon, you can make your bacon using this recipe.

Cheddar Cheese Slices

Diced Dill Pickles

2 Tsp. Ketchup

1 Tbsp. Mayo

Challah Bread Rolls

2 Tbsp. Butter

(I served these with our favorite healthy french fries!)

Method

I adopted the method portion of this recipe from Serious Eats Food Lab

First prepare all your burger fixins. Create your secret sauce, which is ketchup, mayo, and dill pickles. It tastes pretty damn close to the real thing, I don’t know what else is in the real sauce.

Cut your roll in half and butter both sides with some melted butter.

Cut half of your onion and put one half of the onion into a food processor, with your garlic, salt, and pepper. Puree the onion mixture. Then add it to your ground beef mixture. Then add your soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce to the meat. It helps really create a great savory flavor in the meat.

Now form your burger meat into 2 oz. – 3 oz. meatballs. Heat your pan to a super hot temperature. Serious Eats says 600 Degrees Fahrenheit, I say just super hot. As soon as you put your meat onto the griddle, bring in your smasher and press down hard onto the burger patty. Hold it town, you might want to wear long sleeves because the burger grease can start flying on you.

Now hold the smasher down for about 45 seconds to a minute. Once you lift the smasher off the burger, flip the burger. Now add your cheese to the burger, this will help bind the burger more, especially if you chose to use an amount closer to 2 oz.’s .

Cook the burger for another minute, the burger should have a nice brown crust on both sides of the burger. Now place your burger onto your Challah bun. I took the rest of my diced onions and threw them into the burger fat. I then used them to top my burger.

Enjoy!

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