50-50 Burger Failure

SmokeWatcher

SmokeWatcher

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I tried making a 50-50 burger this weekend. A 50-50 burger is made with 50% ground beef and 50% ground bacon. Should be a no-brainer!

I froze and ground the bacon with no issues and mixed it with the ground beef to make 1/3 lb patties. I then set the patties in the fridge until I was ready to grill. Because the patties were so sticky with fat I placed them on the grill straight from the fridge and grilled them about 7-8 minutes per side. The burgers still turned out pretty pink (even though I probed them at 160+...damn thing anyways) and they had absolutely NO BACON FLAVOR!

Would pan frying them help me keep all that bacony goodness by allowing it to cook in the fat instead? :confused:
 
Never done bacon and beef burgers. Only mixed different kinds of beef together. Might have to give this a whirl someday.
 
Have you tried to fry the bacon first and then mixt it with the beef?. I guess in that way you can grill the burguer to rare/medium rare and keep the bacon explosion in your mouth...
 
When I do bacon burgers I just chop up raw bacon and mix it into the ground chuck before I form the burgers. No grinding, just chopped up pieces.
 
I think the lack of flavor may have been over kill with the bacon. I was told once that much of a good thing wasn't always good especially with food .. prehaps a per-cooking the bacon would improve the flavor.. Now I'm going to have to experiment myself.. Good luck..
 
Too much work for me, try this bacon weave. 4 strips bacon cut in half, weave on a sheet of aluminum foil and then fold it tight and flat in the aluminium. Grill with the burgers than toss into a pan with onions and crisp the weave up!




Perfect burger size topping
 
There is a burger chain in So. Cal called Slaters 50/50 that makes that burger of beef and bacon , had one and I don t get it , to me not a combo that works together but thats just me
 
When I'm able to get a crazy good deal on round steak or other lean beef, I usually grind 5 lbs of that & grind with a 1lb of bacon so that I get an 80/20...

I dont think a 50/50 would have a great texture to it...but i do love some bacon...
 
I tried this the same way as the OP, I wasn't impressed either. Never tried it again.
 
If you ground the bacon, then the cured meat is throughout the entire patty, it will stay pink no matter how long you cook it. Less is more here, cut back to about 15% bacon and the flavor of the patty will be improved. If you want bacon flavor, you are better off using whole strips.
 
I don't go 50/50, but I grind a couple strips of bacon per pound of buffalo meat. The Buffalo meat is too lean, so the bacon adds some fat to help keep it together. Any more bacon than that and it gets too salty for my taste.
 
i have done similar, 50 venison and 50 pork mince (or bacon is usa i think)

never get a bacon flavour but what it does is keeps main meant moist and tended. plus all that fat helps get the flame effect on outer layer and crisp it right up

when i do want bacon flavour i get diced bacon bits , fry them up and then mix in to meat right before i cook them.

few people have mentioned this may not be 100% food safe due to mixing raw and cooked meats, so i stopped doing it that way
 
I do a 70% venison and 30% bacon mix that tastes great when grilled or fried
 
Can't say I have had a beef/bacon burger, but the local university sells por-con burgers, which is pork and bacon. They are awesome.
 
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If I were to incorporate bacon into my burgers, and chop it up, and mix it into ground beef. I don't think you would need to be anywhere near 50/50 if you cook the bacon first.

I'd bet you a dollar that a 80/20 beef to fully cooked bacon bits would give you much more bacon flavor than a 50/50 mix of beef to raw bacon -- maybe even 90/10.

CD
 
I will have to give this a few trial runs. Using different methods. Cause I do love bacon.
 
Just to finish my story...
I made another attempt to create a 50-50 burger. This time I used 93/7 ground beef mixed with the ground bacon and decided to fry it. I definitely smelled the bacon! I was so worried about undercooking the bacon that I ended up overcooking it and drying the burger out...but I could at least taste the bacon this time.

This was a lot of work. Next time I'll just leave the bacon as a topping. :tongue:
 
I had my first 50/50 burger yesterday at a small tavern....honestly, I couldn't really taste the difference between that and a regular burger...until I tried my girlfriends regular burger. The taste was different but it still was not a bacon taste. It was my first, so I did not know what to expect. If you try a regular burger side-by-side with one, you can taste a difference but to me it was not the traditional bacon flavor. To get that, simple but bacon on top or fry it up and mix it in.

Just my .02¢ :-D
 
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