I am a little sad to say I don't eat burgers like I used to. It isn't that I don't enjoy them, but more often than not these days I have been making healthier choices when it comes to my meals. Every now and then, I get a craving and that either leads me to firing up the grill or hitting a local place to satisfy me.
With most of the snow melted off the ground, we thought it would be a good day to do some grilling on Sunday. In typical Michigan fashion, we got about five inches of snow yesterday, so it is all back now. Before long I should be able to move my grill back to the patio and free up some space in my garage for the Summer.
As always, I kick things off by starting up my chimney starter. I honestly don't know how I ever function before I learned about these things. With a price tag of around $20 USD, it is easily the most worthwhile grilling accessory I have ever purchased. In fact, I own like two or three of them now. I have one that I keep in the truck for camping, one that I keep at home for our grill, and another that I inherited from my dad when he bought is Kamodo style grill and didn't need it anymore.
Getting close to being ready!
Looks good to me! I dumped the coals over on the right side of the grill in my typical two zone setup. I checked in with 
As you can see here I have a regular beef burger on the right and a ground chicken burger on the left for my wife. The beef burger just has some seasoning salt mixed in with it. The chicken burger has some herbs, spices, Parmesan cheese, onion, and some bread crumbs to hold it together.
You might notice that they are kind of funny shaped. They get a bit tapered at the outside edges because we make the patties ahead of time and then we vacuum seal them with our Food Saver. It works out really well for us because then when we want to grill we just pull them from the freezer, let them thaw, open the package and throw them on the grill.
A couple years ago my brother in law started buying part of a cow from some farmer in the area. It works out really well for me because I just grab a couple of packages of beef from him and I am set for the year. That is a far cry from the amount of beef I used to eat when I was a kid.
I still pick up some New York Strip steaks from Costco or the local butcher from time to time.
As you can see here, I have the burgers offset from the center of the coals. I didn't want to cook them too fast or burn them. The chicken burgers don't have hardly any fat, so they have a tendency to burn if you cook them too hot too fast.
This is what they look like after the first flip. I am starting to realize now just how funny the burgers look from being vacuum sealed. They don't have that "brainy" texture that you typically expect from ground meat. Instead they are much smoother in appearance. Trust me when I tell you, it is just looks. They still taste fantastic!
Of course it wouldn't be a proper grill session without a beer. This was kicking around the bottom of my refrigerator drawer. It is my last Yuengling Oktoberfest from this past fall. There is something I really love about drinking darker/heavier beers when the weather is cold out. If you look really close in the background you can see that most of the snow was gone.
After a couple more flips, they were just about ready to pull of the grill. This is the point where I showed just how out of practice I am and I totally screwed up. Usually I would throw a couple of slices of cheese on each patty and finish them off on the grill. I simply forgot to do that and when I brought them in to
This is just another photo so you can get an idea of how well they turned out. You can clearly see the amount of dryness the chicken burger has because of the lack of fat. My wife doesn't really mind it being a little dry. We stopped eating our burgers on buns about a year ago (at least our homemade ones). It is just an extra way we can cut down our carb intake and after a while you don't really miss it as much as you would think.
You are probably laughing that I was just talking about cutting down on our carb intake and then I have a pile of fries sitting on my plate. If it makes you feel better the fries were air fried, so they are at least a little healthy. Plus you can see that we had our serving of green vegetables too.
I put some mayo, ketchup, and dill relish (because we forgot to buy pickles) on my burger to finish it off. That is either a slice of swiss or white cheddar cheese there. I can't remember now which kind she used.
It was a delicious meal. I patty'd up four more burgers and vacuum sealed them this weekend so we are good to go for the next time I am craving a burger!
All pictures taken by myself or
