Having two Chef’s and a back country camp cook on your team, definitely has it’s benefits! When I knew I wanted to grind up some Axis from a recent hunt in Texas, I hit the team up for some recommendations on something different.
I went with an idea that Lance Lewis threw out there and ran with it. Lance is originally from one of my favorite regions when it comes to food, Louisiana!
The recipe is actually for a spicy sausage but it fit really well with what I was wanting to do. As you can see below, there are lots of spices and of course green onions. We balanced the spicy aspect out with a sweet version of Lances barbeque base. Added some sharp white cheddar and we had an amazing burger.
We use RecTec pellet smokers/grills for all of our outdoor cooking and all of our wild game is processed using Made With Meat equipment.
Recipe by Greg Ray
For The Toppings
Ingredients:
- Fresh Pretzel Roll
- 2 Slices of Bacon
- Smoked Sharp Cheddar
- 1 Jalapeno
- 1/2C Sliced Red Onion
- RecTec Screamin Pig
- Mayo
- Lettuce
For the burgers:
Ingredients:
- 1 pound of ground venison (We used moose and ground with bacon at a 80/20 ratio)
- Chopped Red Onion 1/2 Cup
- Garlic 1 clove
- Favorite spice blend (We used RecTec Freakin Greek)
- Sauce for moisture, you can use ketchup, A1, Heinz 57 or any of your favorites. We used 3 T of Heinz 57
Method:
For The Toppings:
- Cook the bacon
- Leave enough grease to cover bottom of pan
- Slice Jalapeno and onions
- Add to hot bacon grease
- Coat with Screamin Pig Rub (This has some heat to it and is a perfect coating for this topping
- Cook until onions are translucent and jalapenos are soft
- Set aside
Make the burgers:
- Mix venison and all ingredients together
- Shape mixture into 3 to 4 patties (slightly larger than the Kaiser rolls)
- Season your grill grates with a high temp oil
- Heat your grill on high
- Cook burgers from rare to medium rare (do not over cook)
- Add cheese of your choice to melt while on grill for the last minute (we used Smoked Cheddar. )
- Add butter to the Pretzel rolls and place on grill to toast
Construct Burgers:
- We put mayo on bottom bun and add leaf lettuce (Helps keep bottom bun from getting soggy from burger)
- Add burger
- Top with bacon first, then onion, jalapeno mixture
- Add any of your favorite toppings. ( My wife, Deborah loves tomatoes, me, not so much so I just added more jalapeno and onions