Hickory Smoked Hamburgers Recipe
If you want your next BBQ hamburger recipe to be something special, try this one.
There are plenty of hamburger recipes to choose from but this one offers an incredible aroma and flavor. Smoking a burger is possible but you have to take care not to let it dry out because that would ruin the texture. Choose ground beef which is no leaner than 80% because the fat is where the flavor comes from.
Never be afraid of the fat, not only because a lot of it drips out anyway but because fat in limited amounts is actually good for you. The body needs fat to perform. Red meat is also healthy if eaten in moderation, because it is full of iron.
Serve the finished burgers in buns and add lettuce, onion, tomato and pickles if desired, as well as some mayonnaise or your favorite hamburger relish or sauce. This is such a great recipe for a summertime cookout and you can complement the burgers with homemade potato salad and perhaps a 3-bean salad or tossed green salad.
The patties themselves are made with ground round, hot sauce, onion soup mix and optional breadcrumbs, and the hickory chips are soaked in a mixture of Worcestershire sauce and water. If you like, you can omit the hot sauce from the patties and even leave out the onion soup mix if you want, perhaps adding some black pepper instead or some garlic powder.
Without the onion soup mix this would be a low-sodium hamburger recipe, so leave it out if that is an issue, perhaps adding a pinch of onion powder instead to get a similar onion flavor.
Despite its simplicity, the results are phenomenal and anyone who says you cannot smoke burgers has never tried this recipe because it really does work. Burgers are lovely on the barbecue and adding hickory chips to the coals means you can add another dimension to the flavor to keep them interesting and unusual as Bent Tree BBQ Crew taught me recently.
You can buy smoke flavoring to add to food but who needs that when you have a charcoal BBQ in your backyard which you can use instead?
Smoked Hamburger Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 lbs ground round
- 1 teaspoon hot sauce
- ½ cup water
- 1 package dry onion soup mix
- ¾ cup breadcrumbs optional
- 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
- Handful of hickory chips
Instructions
- Stir the Worcestershire sauce with the water in a dish.
- Soak the hickory chips in this for at least an hour.
- Preheat the barbeque.
- Combine the ground beef with the hot sauce, onion soup mix and breadcrumbs if using in a large bowl and mix well.
- Roll the mixture into 12 patties.
- If they are not holding together well then chill them in the refrigerator for a while.
- Spread the hickory chips over the hot coals and wait for them to flame up.
- Add the patties to the barbeque.
- Cook them to medium-rare or medium, or until they are done to your liking.
- They will take anywhere between 10 and 25 minutes to cook through.
- While the burgers cook you should watch them and flip often.
The perfect recipe for a family meal and some guests too (since this recipe makes 12 patties), this is wonderful when served with side dishes. All you need to do is combine the ingredients and shape the patties, soak the wood chips and fire up the barbecue.
Then simply relax in the sunshine and let your hickory burgers cook and smoke to perfection.