Apple Butter, Bacon, Cheddar Burger

This tastes as insane as it looks. I posted this burger to Twitter a couple of years back and it gained quite a few views but, the picture wasn’t that great. That’s why I decided to resurrect this monstrosity and recapture the image. I hope you LOVE it!

1 lb 80/20 ground beef

Salt and pepper to taste

4 Hawaiian burger buns

1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced

2/3 c milk

1 c AP flour

2 tsp salt

Oil for frying

8 slices thick-cut peppered bacon

12 slices medium cheddar

1 1/2 tbs oil

4 lg eggs

1/2 c real mayonnaise

1/2 c apple butter

Start off by dividing the beef into 1/4 and making 4 quarter pond burger patties. Season both sides with salt and pepper. Arrange on a plate, cover and refrigerate for a minimum of 1 hour. About 20 minutes before you’re ready to cook up your patties, preheat your fryer to 338 degrees. Pour the milk into a gallon bag along with your onions. Saturate all of the slices. Put the flour and salt into a seperate container with a mesh sifter and mix well. Once the oil is ready, transfer the onions in three batches to the flour. Work them around to completely coat. Move to sifter and sift off excess flour back into container that you’re using. Scatter in your fry basket and deep fry for roughly 1-1.5 minutes or until golden. Transfer to steel bowl lined with paper towels. Repeat process. Once they’re all done, you can spread them out on a cooling rack to prevent them from becoming soggy. Set aside. Get your buns toasted by heating up a nonstick pan or flattop over medium high heat and spraying the cut sides of your buns with a little nonstick cooking spray. Set them cut side down in your pan and heat until they’ve browned up, about 2 minutes. Set buns aside. Cook up your slices of bacon to your own preferred tenderness and set aside on paper towels.

Now, it’s finally time to get those burgers going. Well be cooking these inside for this recipe, but if you prefer to grill, that’s fine too. Heat a nonstick sauté pan to high heat. Once brought up to temp, place your patties in the pan or on your flattop. Allow them to cook for a minimum of 8 minutes on each side, but again, this will be based off your personal preference. Once both sides are cooked to preference, top each burger with 3 slices of cheese each and cover with a hood, you can use a lid, pizza pan, whatever you use that is large enough to cover the burgers completely. Turn off burner and allow to sit. You can start cooking your eggs. This will give the cheese time to melt on your burgers. Add oil to a nonstick pan and fry up the eggs according to your preference. If you’re uneasy about flipping eggs, this is another time when you can use a hood to cover your pan and steam the eggs to donness. Set aside.

Divide the mayo between the 4 burger buns then, do the same with the apple butter. Build your burger by first adding 1 cheese covered patty to each bottom bun. Follow that with 1 fried egg each, 2 slices of bacon per burger and a small handful of onion strings. Top off with bun toppers and there you have it, my apple butter, bacon, cheddar burger.