Juicy Lucy Smoked Burgers

If you are looking for a next level burger you have come to the right place. The layers of flavors on this burger are amazing. You have one layer from the rub on the burger itself, another layer from the smoky flavor added in the cook, and the burger filling that is also bursting in flavor. Top all this off with some garlic aoli and some bbq sauce and this makes for an insanely tasty meal.

My wife is a burger connoisseur. Usually one of her go to meals when we are dining out we also have them quite often at home on a week night, so when she tells me this burger is the best burger I have ever made, I know I am doing something right. I have to say that I agree with her as well. Besides being a very juicy burger the combination of flavors in this were out of this world. One of the things I like about this as well is you can add your own twist to it. I will tell you about my rub and filling that I made but there are plenty of variations to this you can make to suit what you like best.

Cooking Basics

The prep work for this will be to create the filling and stuff the burgers. I used bacon, onion, mushrooms, garlic, and gorgonzola cheese in my mix. Cook the bacon ahead of time and crumble it. You will also want to chop up onion and mushrooms to small pieces and then saute them before mixing. Once the cooking is done let the ingredients cool off before combining the mix.

Once the filling is ready we need to prepare the burgers. You will want to seperate your burger out into 8 equal sized balls and then flatten them. I use a patty maker which helps a lot. I will put a link to it below in the helpful tools section. Once these are created we will put the filling onto 4 of the patties. Put as much as you can but make sure there is still a clear area around the edge of the burger because we want to make sure we can seal our burger well to ensure it does not fall apart when cooking. Once you have the filling on you will take the 4 patties we did not use in the previous step and put them over the 4 that have stuffing on them and then make sure to seal the sides well. At this point put your favorite burger rub on the patties. I usd McCormicks Pink Himilayan Salt, Black Pepper, and Garlic rub. At this point you will want to put the burgers into the fridge to set for a couple hours before cooking.

When you are ready to cook the burgers you will want to preheat your smoker to 225 and use hickory or mesquite if you can. I always use the pit-boss competition blend pellets because sadly, it is one of the few varieties I have found in my area. We are going to throw these burgers on until the internal temp for them reaches 130. At this point you can either open your sear plate on your smoker and turn up the heat to finish them off or move them to a grill depending on your preference and what you have available. Either way the temp will go up quickly at this point. If you want more cheese on these burgers throw it on when you hit an internal temp of 155. You will want to sear both sides of the burger and remove them when they hit 165 internal temperature.

Let the burgers rest for 5 to 10 minutes and then they are ready to eat. I topped my burger with a garlic aoli and some steak sauce. I will include the recipe for Aoli below but feel free to use whatever toppings you want and dig in.

Final Thoughts

• Alternatives - I love recipes that you can use over and over again and change up to try out different flavors. This is definitely one of those recipes.

• Vegetables - I saw some recipes that included jalepenos or other types of hot peppers in the mix. Spinach or green peppers might also be a nice flavor.
• Cheese - Blue cheese is a popular choice for burgers. I have also seen some recipes use a mix of a crumble type of cheese and some shredded chedar as well to get the ooze effect when you slice one open or take a bite.
• Meat - If you wanted to take a little extra time you could always smoke the bacon before prepping the mix to give it even more of a smoky flavor. I have heard people rave about making bacon with a little maple syrup or brown sugar to give it a candied taste as well.

If any of you decide to get creative please leave a comment with what you tried and how it turned out either on this post or any of the social media channels I have set up. I would love to hear about it.

• Lighten It Up - I always try to lighten up recipes if I can do it without negatively affecting the flavor. One of the things we did was to use 85% burger instead of 80/20. I know you can get 90 or 92% lean beef as well but if you try this I would make sure to add an egg and maybe a few bread crumbs. Without this you might have crumbly burgers and lose the stuffing.

Recipe