No Thanks, I'm Stuffed

My name is Betsy and I am a foodie.  I love food and everything about it.  I love shopping for it, I love reading about it, I love creating with it, I love watching shows about it and most of all I love eating it.  I love to cook and I love being creative but sometimes I cheat and I steal my ideas from somewhere else.  Last year I was watching one of my favorite shows, Man vs. Food and I saw the episode from the Twin Cities in Minnesota.  One of the first things they showed were dueling bars that both claimed to have the original and the best Juicy Lucy.  What is a Juicy Lucy you ask, it is an amazing creation that takes the cheese from on top of a hamburger and stuffs it inside so when you bite into the burger all of the ooey gooey cheesy goodness is baked right there inside.  Sounds delicious right? 

I have tried to master this technique at home before but the burger always managed to break open and the cheese oozed out on the grill and just ended up in a big ol mess.  It was far from the  amazing creation that I had watched Adam Richman enjoy on MvF. 

Today I decided to try again and this time I was determined to get it right.  I had also decided that I was going to amp up my fillings to make these burgers even more decadent.  I started with two pounds from the abundance of ground beef that is in our freezer (we bought 1/4 of a cow this winter and have more meat in our freexer than we know what to do with, but that is a story for a different day).  We always make our own burgers at home and stay away from the pre-formed patties you can buy at the store.  I started as I normally do by adding a little worcestershire sauce and about a quarter cup of ranch dressing (this is my secret to super yummy and juicy burgers), I also threw in some random seasoning and mixed up the meat.  Then I formed eight patties by pressing the meat into a round cookie cutter to get evenly shaped burgers.

Once I had my burger shaped it was time to stuff them.  Jason loves swiss cheese any time but his favorite is when it's on burgers.  I normally don't like swiss cheese (it's a little too strong for me) but for some reason when it's on a burger I like it.  Maybe it's a little like the movie Runaway Bride where the way she likes her eggs changes with each guy.  But I only like my eggs scrambled and always have so then again maybe not.  Because of Jason's love of swiss, I decided to make two of the burgers stuffed with swiss cheese and mushrooms.

Then I decided to make the other two burgers for me.  I stuffed those with roasted garlic, feta and some Laughing Cow french onion cheese (don't worry I had a mint after eating this).

Once I had my fillings done it was time for the hard part, putting the tops on the burgers and sealing them up so none of the goodness tried to break out of the middle while they were on the grill.

After quite a while I had all the burgers sealed up and ready for the grill and I was fairly confident that I had mastered the Juicy Lucy and there would be no cheesy goodness leaking out this time.

Once I had the burgers ready it was time for some camp potatoes.  There is nothing original about camp potatoes, I'm sure veryone has had them and many have made their own at home.  Original or not, I love these things.  Thinly sliced baby red potatoes with onions, oil or butter and some seasoning all wrapped up in a tin foil blanket and grilled until the bottom layer gets a nice crisp to it.  We probably eat these potatoes one out of every two times we grill out and we grill out a lot.

This is about the time that I turned over our meal to Jason and let him work his magic on the grill.  I hate to stereotype but in this house the wife is in the kitchen and the husband is on the grill.  I can cook pretty much anything but I'm not very good with a grill so I put our dinner in the very capable hands of my husband.  Between my mad burger pressing skills and Jason's talent with the charcoal, our Juicy Lucys turned out perfect!  The only problem was that I forgot to mark them so I had no idea which burger was which flavor once they were all cooked. 

These burgers were amazing!  A perfect start to our grilling season.  And after eating one of these Juicy Lucys I can honestly say that I, like the burger, am stuffed.