Bacon Cheeseburger Buns ... Bread-Filled Beefy Goodness!

I love cheeseburgers. I love them very much. So, after making the other buns, I knew I had to make a cheeseburger variant.

Now, I wanted to make bacon cheeseburger buns. But, I had a small problem. One of the members of my family is insane. Not just a little insane, a lot insane. Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest insane. Crazy, nuts, loony!

Why, you might ask? She doesn't like bacon. I won't mention who it is. It's just too disgraceful. Bacon is one of Nature's Most Perfect Foods. To say you don't like bacon is like saying that you enjoy Stir-Fried Kittens over Puppy Fried Rice. It's just wrong.

Ingredients

• 800g ground beef
• 1/2 cup diced onions
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cheese
• 3/4 cup ketchup
• 2 teaspoons mustard

Procedure

I browned the ground beef in a frying pan. Broke it up into small pieces. I added salt and pepper to taste. Large pinches, really.

The onions I sweated in a small frying pan. I used a little bit of spray oil in the pan before cooking. I cooked over a low flame until the onions were translucent.

When both the onions and ground beef were done, I mixed them.

I then cut up some semi-frozen bacon into small pieces. Fried them in the previously-used onion pan (why let that good taste go to waste?). Cooked it fairly well, but not yet to crunchy.

In a small bowl, I mixed the ketchup and mustard. The McCormick's mustard here is fairly strong, so I didn't use much. You can see in the picture how little I used compared to the ketchup (Heinz, of course). I used a fork to mix this thoroughly to evenly distribute the mustard.

I made the dough according to my previous post. This time, I weighed out 90 gram pieces for each top and bottom. This still resulted in a fair-sized bun when rolled out to about 1/8-inch thick. Each piece of dough, I rolled out into something resembling a circle.

On half of the dough-rounds, I spread a heaping tablespoon of the ketchup-mustard mixture. I used the back of the spoon the spread it outwards, like one would apply pizza sauce to a pizza crust ... drop the ketchup in the middle, then spiral outwards with the back of the spoon to spread it around.

For most of the buns, I then put a thin layer of bacon on. On all the buns, I then put on a nice thick layer of the ground beef-and-onion mixture. I made sure to put on plenty so that everyone got a generous serving.

For the last bit of topping, I put a dollop of the cheese (I was using Cheese Whiz this time) on each. A big dollop because these are cheeseburger buns.

Finally, into the oven at 350F (175C) for about 15 minutes. When they come out, immediately brush the tops with melted butter. You'll be happy you did.

Let them cool ... then devour.

Test Results

Primary Test Group: Fantastic! Insisted on eating them all.

Test Group C: Lost out due to the avorice of the Primary Test Group.

Test Group M: Also lost out.

Potential Variations

I'm definitely going to have to vary the cheese. I wasn't that happy with the Cheese Whiz. While it's good, I know we can do better. Maybe a medium Cheddar would be good for most (I know I want SHARP).

Conclusions

I love this bun recipe. It's so easy. Anything that can go in a sandwich looks like it'll go in this bun.

I'm thinking Philly Cheesesteak next ... or a sliced chicken with cheese and chili powder.

Yum!