I’ve cooked beef/bacon burgers once before, back in May 2016. On that occasion, I smoked them at 300-325°F using the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker. Delicious and smoky, to be sure. But on this occasion in August 2019, I grilled beef/bacon burgers using my Weber Summit 450 gas grill.
A company named Porter Road Butcher gave me a two-pound package of their Beef Vs. Bacon mix to try. It’s a 50/50 blend of smoked pork belly bacon and dry-aged beef trimmings. Porter Road doesn’t specify the percentage of lean-to-fat in the ground beef, only that it’s “lean ground beef”. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s 90/10 ground beef or something close to that.
If you’ve never tried a beef/bacon mix for burgers, you should, especially if you’re a bacon lover. It’s amazing how much flavor bacon adds to otherwise delicious ground beef. But these Bacon Vs. Bacon burgers had it all—the fat and smokiness from the bacon plus the hearty beef flavor that only comes from dry-aged beef.
There are two things to keep in mind when grilling burgers like these:
- The bacon fat makes these burgers very sticky. A little bit of water or non-stick cooking spray on your hands helps when forming the patties, and a shot of non-stick cooking spray on each side of the patties will prevent sticking on the grate.
- These burgers will flare-up during grilling, I guarantee it! That was one advantage of smoking burgers like these in the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker; the indirect cooking method prevented any flare-ups. But when grilling over direct heat on your Weber gas grill, you’ll need to watch these burgers constantly and take steps to extinguish flare-ups.
As I mentioned before, Beef Vs. Bacon comes in a two-pound package. I formed it into six one-third pound burgers using a kitchen scale, then sprinkled both sides with kosher salt.
I preheated the grill with all burners on HIGH for 10 minutes, then cleaned the grates with a grill brush. With clean grates, I turned all burners down to MEDIUM and let the grill settle in at that temperature for a few minutes before adding the burgers.
The burgers flared-up almost immediately! For most of the time, I grilled with the lid open so I could blow-out any flare-ups. I’m not much for the water-in-spray-bottle method of controlling flare-ups…but do what have have to do to keep your burgers from turning into briquettes. Blow, spray, move them around on the grate, whatever.
I grilled the burgers for two minutes, flipped them, grilled for another two minutes, and kept doing that for a total of eight minutes. At that point, I started checking the internal meat temperature using my Thermapen Mk4, looking for 140°F, about medium doneness. I kept blowing and flipping and measuring until I hit that internal temp, then removed the burgers to a rimmed baking sheet pan for a short rest before serving.
These beef/bacon patties made delicious hamburgers (so good that I forgot to take a photo!) but I did use the leftovers in Loco Moco, my favorite Hawaiian comfort food, and got a photo of that.
Anyway, like I said before, give beef/bacon burgers a try on your Weber gas grill. You can order Beef Vs. Bacon from Porter Road Butcher (at time of writing, it’s $22 for a two-pound package) or you can find similar blends at better butcher shops near you. You might even try making your own blend by grinding up a pound of good quality bacon and mixing it into a pound of good quality ground beef.
But whatever you do, make yourself some beef/bacon burgers soon. They are delicious!
Porter Road Butcher gave me this sample of Beef Vs. Bacon to try. The comments and opinions expressed are my own and have not been reviewed or approved by Porter Road Butcher.