grill

Chorizo-Hamburger-7c

I don’t know about you, but I watch a lot of Food Network. I know, you are shocked. For me, it’s just so easy to sit back, watch people make delicious food, and get inspired. Which is exactly how this chorizo burger came about.

This burger was 100% inspired by a Diner’s Drive-Ins and Dives episode my husband and I were watching last weekend. The episode featured a English-owned restaurant that made a delicious looking chorizo burger. How could an Englishman get a Chorizo burger wrong (sarcasm implied). But of course Guy made it sound like it was the best thing he ever ate. And it really did look good, so my husband and I set about making our own.

Chorizo Hamburger-1

My original intention was to buy pre-made chorizo and just mix that in with ground beef. Turns out, here in North Carolina, chorizo isn’t that easy to find. It also turns out that it’s not that hard to make assuming you have a well stocked spice rack. To make the chorizo, you just mix up ground pork with about a hundred different spices, sugar, and a bit of vinegar.

Chorizo Hamburger-4

Once the chorizo is made, the rest it pretty much like making a regular-ol hamburger. I just mixed the chorizo in with some ground beef and cilantro (just like the DDD recipe) and formed that mixture into patties. In the picture above, you can sort of see the marbling of the pink beef with the orange-tinted pork.

To cook the burgers, I seared them on both sides, then covered them and cooked on medium heat until they got to 160 degrees. Unfortunately, since they contain pork, you probably aren’t going to want anything less then well done.

But what’s is so great about this burger, besides that flavor, is that the pork really makes the burger extra moist and flavorful. The lady a Trader Joe’s told me that it was her husband’s secret to a juicy hamburger.

Chorizo-Hamburger-5b

I topped this spicy burger off with cheese (for my husband, at least) to help balance out all that heat from the chorizo, and I stacked the burger on a heaping portion of guacamole, doused the top with some salsa, and topped it off with lettuce and tomato.

If you are like me and are avoiding bread and cheese, I can tell you that it is just as good without the cheese and wrapped in lettuce, which is exactly how I ate mine.

Chorizo-Hamburger-8b

I hope you give this recipe a try, especially over the Summer when you start firing up that grill. It is a whole new spin on the classic burger that is super flavorful and definitely has a kick.

Enjoy!

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There are a few things to me that are quintessential to summer. 2 of them are grilling out and peaches.

To kick off my “summer vacation” (the week off I had between jobs), my husband combined those two things with our favorite Friday meal, pizza, to create the grilled peach and prosciutto pizza.

I have to admit, we had never grilled pizza before. So what follows are some guidelines that we should have followed, not exactly what we did do.

We started with some gorgeous and juicy peaches from the previous weekends farmers market haul, prosciutto, mozzarella, basil, and ricotta. I would also highly recommend mixing in some garlic into the ricotta and drizzling balsamic on top. While the pizza was delicious, those two things would have added some more depth of flavor.

The first thing we did was grilled off the pizza dough. We placed the dough right on the grill over in direct heat. What we should have done was heat up the grill with the cover down until the thermometer read 400 degrees. While the grill is heating up, you can prep the dough and all the other ingredients, then once its hot toss the dough on there and cook on each side for a few minutes.

Once the dough was a bit crispy and more crust like, I removed them from the grill and started layering on the ingredients, starting with the ricotta, the prosciutto, peaches, cheese, and then the basil.

We put the pizzas back on the grill over indirect heat and closed the top to let them cook for another couple minutes until the cheese got nice and bubbly.

Grilling pizza really isn’t all too different from cooking them in the oven. I really enjoyed the extra flavor that we got from the direct fire. There is something about that charred flavor from the grilling and the sweetness from the peaches that make this the perfect summer meal.

Do you grill pizzas? What are some of your favorite flavors?

[yumprint-recipe id=’2′]

Spicy Chorizo Burger

Grilled Peach and Prosciutto Pizza