Grilling is for Girls: REAL SIMPLE Beef, Bacon, and Egg Burgers

Last night signaled the end of my grilling challenge! Every week Jared's been in medical school, I made a different burger from Real Simple's June article "Top This." It was a really fun adventure for me; at the beginning I needed some help from Jared in lighting the grill, but pretty soon I was confident enough to do things all alone. Yesterday I got the grill to start on my first try.

 

 

The final burger was total comfort food - like a breakfast sandwich, but even better. I went with whole wheat English muffins, and an heirloom tomato from a local farmer's market.

 

 

Maybe it's just because I'm getting better, (or maybe the prep time is one of the shortest listed), but this took me less than 30 minutes from lighting the grill to sitting down at the table. It also had the simplest steps (I thought) and simplest ingredients.

 

After lighting the grill, I chopped up the bacon into fairly large chunks and mixed it with the ground beef and ground black pepper.  I formed patties, which looked pretty large, especially considering I had bought a little over a pound of beef instead of 1.25 pounds.

 

Once these were on the grill, I used the first four minutes to do some dishes.  I flipped the burgers, and then started on the English muffins, eggs, and tomato.

 

 

I cooked Jared's two eggs a little longer than my egg since he doesn't like super runny yolks.  I toasted the muffins in our little toaster instead of grilling them.  (Our grill is pretty small so there isn't much spare room.)

 

I took three slices off the tomato for myself.  Jared is not a fan of tomatoes, so I get the heirloom all to myself!

 

The burgers were done in about nine minutes total.  The last step was simply to put everything together.

 

 

For mine, I put the tomato on top of the bottom half of the muffin, added the burger, then the egg, and topped with the rest of the "bun."

 

 

These were incredible - and so filling!  Usually Jared has eaten two burgers every week (one night he even ate three) and this time he could only finish one.

 

 

I would say my favorite burgers of the whole challenge were these "breakfast" burgers, and the Salmon-Scallion Burgers. But all the recipes were definitely worth trying, and now I have a new skill under my belt.

 

Can't wait till next summer - I'll be grilling everything in sight.