You may remember Maks from such earlier creations as The Ultimate Bacon Sandwich, or his famous Bacon Cereal. Well, the professor of Pork is at it again, and this time he's created the Bacon Cheese Bacon Burger! Much like you'd mince beef to create a burger patty, Maks makes the patty from 100% pure bacon!

From: http://www.speakeasy.org/~sjmaks/bcb/

...I struggled for months wondering how I could possibly top Bacon Cereal. It can't be done, I thought. Not possible. Then it finally hit me: A bacon burger. No, not a hamburger with bacon on it, but a burger whose base is ground bacon instead of ground beef. It's often been said that there's a fine line between genius and insanity. I think I've blurred that line this time around.

[CONTINUED]

Nearly a year has passed since I made the mistake of making Bacon Cereal. It was my most popular creation yet and even got me a radio interview with our friends in Canada. I'd like to say I've grown wiser and matured in those past months, but you wouldn't be reading this if I had. I struggled for months wondering how I could possibly top Bacon Cereal. It can't be done, I thought. Not possible. Then it finally hit me: A bacon burger. No, not a hamburger with bacon on it, but a burger whose base is ground bacon instead of ground beef. It's often been said that there's a fine line between genius and insanity. I think I've blurred that line this time around.

Ingredients:

The first thing you'll notice is two different types of bacon. You've got your thick sliced on the left and the traditional sliced on the right. The thin sliced was much fattier and I thought this might be necessary to help hold the patty together and excrete bacony goodness that would become the glue of my baconburger. I also opted for wheat buns and light Ranch dressing. We've all read about the health advantages of wheat bread over white bread, so that choice should be obvious. That white bread stuff will kill ya. Without wasting any time I began to slice the bacon into pieces roughly 1" in width:

You're probably wondering how I turned bacon into ground bacon. I had initially wanted to buy a meat grinder for this, but after pricing them realized it was a little excessive for this project. Then I remembered that I own a food processor and that should do the job just fine. Grinding raw bacon was probably not a use my parents had thought of when they bought it for me.

You may think you've done a lot of strange things in your life, but until you've put slices of raw bacon into a food processor at 10:30pm, you really haven't even scratched the surface of strange. Without a doubt, this was the oddest experience of my life. Even weirder than witnessing a homeless man arguing with a hot dog wrapper.

Strike that. Pressing the "Pulse" button on my food processor and watching raw bacon being ground into tiny pieces was the strangest moment of my life. I'd write more, but there's no metaphor to properly describe this experience.

After grinding over a pound of bacon, I was left with a bowl of this:

I couldn't imagine that I would shortly be eating that. It's kind of like when you first found out what hot dogs were made of and thought you could never eat another as long as you lived. Certainly an unsettling experience, but something we all get over. Just like I got over looking into a bowl of ground bacon.

The next step was to form the bacon into patties. Originally I was planning on making one monster patty, but realized it would be nearly impossible to cook it all the way through. Raw pork and the human body don't agree with each other so well. So, I made two thinner patties:

The one on the right was significantly thicker than the one on the left, but I was so proud of my work that I couldn't re-form them. I decided to practice with the large patty, learn from my mistakes and ideally perfect the thinner patty. To the best of my knowledge, nobody had done this before. I was venturing into uncharted culinary waters. I felt like the Christopher Columbus of bacon.

One thing I soon discovered is how horribly greasy one's hands become when forming ground bacon into burger patties. The only way I could've had more grease on my hands would've been to soak them in oil for a few hours. It took the following cleaning supplies to remove the protective grease coating on my skin:

Here's the first, thicker patty cooking:

As expected, the first burger was a bit of a disaster. The patty came apart in a few places and was spitting hot grease at me continously. It was like a king cobra defending its territory, only with hot grease instead of venom. Tasty, tasty venom. I was able to perfect a method of flipping the bacon patty utilizing two spatulas.

There is a lapse in pictures here. The only explanation that I can offer up is that I had inhaled a few days worth of sodium from the cooking fumes and was not thinking straight. I think I am the first person to have freebased bacon. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the second, thinner patty cooking. Nor are there any pictures of the many puddles of grease on my stove that later joined forces to form a grease lake.

Without further ado, I present The Bacon Cheese Baconburger:

The final contents: baconburger patty, cheddar cheese, 2 slices of bacon, ranch dressing and fresh ground pepper. Wait--what's that on the crown of the bun?

It's Walla Walla Sweet Onion Mustard with Smokey Bacon! Yes, the only way to top a baconburger topped with 2 slices of bacon is with a bacon mustard. Mustard with bacon in it. Talk about a timesaver. If anyone knows where to find mayo with bacon in it, please e-mail me.

If there's one thing I've learned in my years of bacon consumption, and I believe it's the only thing I've learned, is that you need a big glass of water at the ready:

What good is a burger picture without a cross section view:

I can almost smell it. Wait, that's just the lingering aroma in my apartment.

And finally, the obligatory empty plate picture:

I'd like to say I'll never attempt anything this stupid again, or that I've learned my lesson or something else along those lines. But I haven't. I think I've made it abundantly clear that I will continue to do stupid things without any regard for my health. See you next time!

E-Mail me