It’s been a while!

Hi everyone, it’s been quiet at Photos & Food for the past week. You know how it is… you plan a ton of stuff and then life gets in the way. Fortunately it’s all good life stuff, so no worries there. We’re thrilled to be back at the keyboard to share some of our kitchen adventures with you, our foodie friends!

Blogger and Brand Partnerships

As you may or may not know, bloggers sometimes work with brands to create awesome blog posts… or in our case, recipes. In some cases the brand will reach out to the food blogger, and in some cases the blogger reaches out to the brand.

A few months ago, we started up one of these great partnerships with Bradley Smoker. For those of you that don’t know them, they manufacture an amazing line of Smokers, wood bisquettes and smoking accessories.

For the record, if you ever see us promoting one of our partners’ products, it’s because we’re passionate about using that product. We never partner with companies for the sake of getting free products. We want to love using these products and we want our readers to try them and love them as well. That’s how we feel about our Bradley Smoker.

Beer-flavored bisquettes

Normally when I think of beer and smoking or grilling, I think of a cold beer in one hand while I tend to the smoker or BBQ with the other hand. Bradley recently took this concept to a new level. They now carry premium Beer Bisquettes (the wood used to smoke in their smokers). So you can smoke food with wood that’s been infused with beer… how cool is that? We love the concept… now Bradley, get back in the lab to develop some more of these “smoking” concepts!

Smoked burgers

Up until recently, I didn’t even know you could smoke burgers. I was pleasantly surprised to know that I could use one of my burger recipes to make some slow cooked smoked perfection! There’s a whole new world of cooking out there for me!

On a side note, I’ll never forget when I received the smoker. My son and I were in the car and we were chatting about the smoker… I looked over at him and said “we’re going to smoke everything”… to which he replied, “Dad, that doesn’t sound good” 🙂

Next time you’re in a cooking rut, consider smoking foods. It’s a lot easier than you might think. With our Bradley Smoker, you simply set the temperature, load your bisquettes, grab a cold beverage sit back and relax while your food cooks away. The smokey flavour adds a wonderful touch to food!

This weekend, try a new recipe or method of cooking, and always remember to eat well, friends.

Smoked Burgers with Balsamic Glaze

 

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Prep time

15 mins

Cook time

1 hour 30 mins

Total time

1 hour 45 mins

 

Slow cooked smoked burgers with balsamic glaze. A perfect twist on the beloved burger! We usually grill, but this technique adds an unexpected wonderful smoked flavour.

Author: Nelson Cardoso

Recipe type: Main

Cuisine: American

Serves: 4 burgers

Ingredients

• 2 Lbs or .9 kg of ground beef chuck
• 2 large cloves of garlic, minced (or three smaller ones)
• 1 Tbsp balsamic glaze (it's a concentrated version of balsamic vinegar that many stores carry)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1½ tsp coarse salt
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1. I used the Original Bradley Smoker for this recipe, so I'll be explaining the process for our smoker. For other smokers, just bring the temperature up to 225 ºF and prepare the wood for smoking as per your smoker instructions.
2. Remove all the trays from the smoker.
3. Fill the water bowl to half with water.
4. Load the feeder with enough bisquettes for about 1 hour of smoking (3 bisquettes per hour plus 2 to push the last few).
5. Open the damper at the top about ½ way to release smoke.
6. Turn on the smoke generator and preheat the bisquette burner for 20 minutes.
7. Turn on the smoker and bring the temperature up to 225 ºF.
8. While the smoker is heating up, place the ground chuck in a large bowl.
9. Sprinkle the garlic, balsamic glaze, olive oil, salt and pepper over the ground beef.
10. Gently mix the ground beef and other ingredients with your (very clean) hands.
11. Divide the mixture into four equal parts, and with your hands, gently form 4 burgers, be careful not to over pack or over handle the burgers.
12. Spray one smoker tray/rack with non-stick spray.
13. Once the smoker reaches 225 ºF, open the door, place the tray/rack with the burgers on the second shelf from the bottom, insert the prong from the thermometer in the centre of the meat in one of the burgers and close the door quickly to avoid dropping the temperature
14. Make sure the temperature rises again to 225 ºF. Adjust if needed.
15. Check the temperature every ½ hour to ensure it's still at 225 ºF.
16. Once the digital thermometer reaches 160 ºF, remove the rack with the burgers from the smoker and place it on a baking sheet to avoid dripping.
17. Load up some fresh burger buns (we used onion buns) with the burger patties and your favourite toppings.
18. Serve quickly while it's hot! Enjoy!

Notes

Once you mix in the balsamic glaze, the meat will look like it has dark patches. There's nothing wrong with this. It's just colour from the glaze.
For our burger sauce, we combined a bit of smokey BBQ sauce with mayo... super easy and delicious!

3.5.3208

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Nelson Cardoso