Episode 017 Grilled Pork Burgers

Intro: Welcome in, y’all, to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host Susie Weinrich.

Susie Weinrich: Today we are talking about a very special grilled dinner that is near and dear to my heart. This is the Grilled Pork Burger episode. So I grew up in Iowa and on the 4th of July in my hometown, there is an enormous festival, party, whatever, in the park. There are lots of craft vendors, games, and fun things to do. There’s a parade, there’s a boat parade. Then there are also food vendors in the part, and one of the main things that you want to get on the 4th of July is grilled pork burgers. We love them so much, and I knew that I needed to have a grilled pork burger recipe on my site, momsdinner.net. So sure enough, I tested, I tried, and I finally nailed it, and it is excellent. It’s a very popular recipe on my site. It is a Grilled Pork Burger. We are not talking about sausage, we are talking about ground pork, which by the way is also a super economical option for your grill. These pork burgers are also topped with a homemade garlic cream sauce that will knock your socks off. 

Tips and Tricks: Here are the ingredients you want to have to make your grilled pork burgers. Two pounds of ground pork, saltine crackers, milk, Worcestershire sauce, Lawry seasoned salt, onion powder, and garlic powder. Then to make the garlic cream sauce, you want to make sure you have mayonnaise, sour cream, dijon mustard, fresh garlic, and kosher salt. Then of course, to serve, you want to make sure you have buns, lettuce, tomato, onion, or whatever you want on your burger. 

Just like we talked about in episode one, where we made beef burgers, all of those same tips are going to apply to your grilled pork burgers. So number one, do not overmix the panade with the meat. You want it just to all come together nice and light and fluffy. 

Second of all, after you form your patties, you want to take your thumb or a clean spoon and make a divot in the center of each burger patty. That’s going to reduce the amount of shrinkage that you get on the grill. When that fat cooks out of the burger, your burger patty will shrink up. But if you have that little divot in the center, that’s really going to reduce the amount of shrinkage you get. The other thing with your pork burgers, I do like to cook them to 160. I know that you can eat pork closer to 140, 145, but since you’re eating that ground pork and you’re not sure of that exact source, you know it’s not like one cut of meat, like a pork tenderloin, I do recommend cooking your pork burgers to 160. 

The other tip is making a panade. I said it earlier. A panade is basically a method for keeping ground meat recipes juicy. I was going to say moist. We’re going to say juicy. In this recipe, we’re using saltine crackers and milk, and Worcestershire sauce to make that panade to add to the ground pork. Even though you’re cooking it then to 160, it’s still going to be a juicy burger. 

Grilled Pork Burgers Recipe: Let’s get to making our pork burgers. You’re going to want to set your grill up, whether you have a charcoal or a gas grill for direct heat grilling. Now in the kitchen, you’re going to start with 12 saltine crackers. You’re going to squish all those up so that they make a nice cracker crumb. To those cracker crumbs, you’re going to add a quarter cup of milk, two teaspoons of Worcestershire sauce, and one teaspoon of Lawry seasoned salt. Then one teaspoon each of onion powder and garlic powder. Mix that all together and then let that sit for about five minutes so that it kind of makes like a little panade paste. Then once that’s ready, you’re going to add two pounds of ground pork. You can either use clean hands or you can use a fork, but lightly mix everything together so that that panade is mixed throughout all of the ground pork. 

It’s time to make your patties. You can make six third-pound burgers, or you can make eight-quarter-pound burgers. Whatever you want to do. Form your patties, and as I said before, press your thumb or a clean spoon into the center of each patty, making a little divot to reduce the shrinkage on the grill. Take your pork burgers out to the grill and you’re going to start them over direct heat with the divot side down. You’re going to grill it for about four to five minutes. On the first side, flip the burgers over so the divot side is up and you’re going to cook them for another three to four minutes on the second side. If you have an instant-read internal thermometer, that’s a lot of words. If you have an instant-read internal temperature thermometer, is that what it’s called, why can’t I think of what it’s called? Anyway, take the temperature of your burgers and make sure that they’re 160 degrees. If they haven’t reached 160 degrees, pop them over indirect heat and pop the lid on and let them cook a couple more minutes until they reach that 160. Then you’re going to let the burgers cool for about five minutes before eating. In that five minutes, you can go ahead and make the garlic cream sauce that you’re going to serve with your burgers. 

In a little bowl, you’ll just mix a quarter cup of mayonnaise, a quarter cup of sour cream, one tablespoon of Dijon mustard, one garlic clove that has been finely minced, and just some kosher salt to taste. Stir that all together, and that’s your sauce. It’s delicious.

When you serve your burgers, I like to use just like a brioche bun or a sesame seed hamburger bun. Smear a little bit of that garlic cream sauce on both sides of the bun, the top, and the bottom. Add some lettuce and some red or white onion. Here’s my tip with the onion. After you slice it, rinse your slices under a little bit of cool water because then the onion won’t overpower the entire burger. Also, when you add your tomato, add a little bit of kosher salt, black pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder before you serve your dinner. The seasoned tomato makes a huge difference.

So on your bun, add the sauce, add your lettuce, tomato, onion, and your pork burger. Maybe a little bit more sauce, and you’re good to go.

For serving these burgers, I love to serve sweet potato fries or sweet potato tater tots. If you’ve never had those, those are delicious too. Then either corn on the cob or I have a wonderful recipe for homemade creamed corn that’s made with corn on the cob that you cut off of the cob.

Of course, I will link all of these recipes for you in the show notes so you can access them whenever you’re ready to make these grilled pork burgers for dinner. 

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Outro: Until next time, I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner, makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya.