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East Tennessee was blessed with sunshine and brilliant blue skies this past weekend so we decided to do our first big BBQ of the year. After a day of shopping and prepping brisket, pork, and chicken, Alexis and I realized that it was 4pm and we hadn't had breakfast or lunch. We were getting on the edge of hangry, something HAD to be done.

Fortunately, it is our "cheat day" so we made these killer Cheddar Jack Smash Burger Sliders on one of our Big Green Eggs.

Tips for Making Smash Burgers

• Preheat. Whether you are using a grill, flat-top griddle, or skillet, preheat it thoroughly. The air temp of your grill gets to 450°f a lot faster than the metal will, so give it time.
• Fresh is best. Use the freshest ground chuck you can get, it makes a difference. My Food City grinds beef in-store a few times a day. Some places ship it out to the store already ground up.
• Thin is in. Use a thin, metal spatula (Amazon Affiliate link), sometimes called a "fish or filet spatula". It makes scraping under and flipping the burger easier and it helps keep your cast-iron cookware clean.

Cheddar Jack Double Stack Smash Burger Sliders

By www.nibblemethis.com

Published 03/22/2021

The big-time flavor of a deliciously greasy smash burger in a smaller package.

Ingredients

• 1 pound fresh ground chuck 
• 1 teaspoon finely ground beef rub (we used our NMT Beef Rub v.2 recipe)
• 6 slices Sargento Ultra-Thin Cheddar Jack Cheese slices
• 6 Pepperidge Farm White Slider Buns
• 2 tablespoons mustard-based BBQ sauce (We used our NMT Golden Mustard BBQ Sauce recipe from our second book, The Offset Smoker Cookbook)

Instructions

1. Preheat grill to 450-500°f. I used the Big Green Egg as shown in the notes below. But you could also use about any charcoal grill, flat-top griddle, or use a skillet on your range top. Just make sure that your skillet, griddle, or whatever is in the heat for at least 10 minutes before cooking. You want it good and hot. A drop of water on the cooking surface should dance around.
2. Prepare the burgers. Use a scale to weigh out 2.5 ounce balls of ground chuck. 
3. Smash the burgers. Once the griddle is fully preheated, hit it with a little high-temperature cooking oil - canola oil, beef tallow, peanut oil, whatevs. It should smoke pretty quickly, if not, your griddle probably isn't hot enough. Use a burger press to smash out the burgers on the hot griddle. 
4. Sear the first side. Let the beef sizzle, pop, and be happy for 90 seconds. By then, the bottom should be crispy and the top of the patties (smashies?) should be turning from pink to grey or brown. Use a thin spatula to scrape under and flip the patties.
5. On the flip side. Immediately after the flip, I mean immediately, season them evenly with the fine beef rub and top each with a slice of cheese. Let cook another 60-90 seconds. 
6. Stack and rack. Scrape/scoop a patty and stack it on another one, remove to a cooling rack. Repeat with the other four. 
7. Build the burgers. Top each slider bun bottom with a smash burger double stack. Lightly brush the bottom of the top bun with some of the mustard-based BBQ sauce and serve with crispy tater tots.

Yield: 3 servings

Prep Time: 00 hrs. 20 mins.

Cook time: 00 hrs. 10 mins.

Total time: 30 mins.

Tags: burger, grill

I cook smash burgers in several ways, such as; 

• in a cast-iron skillet, 
• a griddle plate, 
• on the griddle insert in my Oklahoma Joe's Rider DLX pellet grill, or 
• on one of our Blackstone flat top griddles. 

Lately, I've been using a griddle plate that I salvaged from a Char-Broil Commercial 4 burner grill. This plate fits my PK Grills and large Big Green Eggs like a glove.

My setup was using a Kick Ash Basket full of lump charcoal and I set the griddle plate on an adjustable rig with the crossbars on the middle setting. It wasn't designed to fit like this but it is almost a perfect fit for me. 

I pre-weighed the beef balls at 2.5 ounces and then gave them the smash and smear using a 5mm deep Ballastic Smasher. I have had many burger presses and such and this one is my favorite because it is made from easy to clean stainless steel, feels bomb-proof, and is just the right depth for smash burgers.

You keep seeing my BGE in the Challenger Designs cart a lot lately because my other large BGE in the BGE Modular Nest is out of commission. It needs to have its rings replaced and I also need to do a warranty claim on its base. I just haven't felt like dealing with it, so I've been using this one rather exclusively.

My cheese of choice today was Sargento Ultra Thin Cheddar Jack. I'm a big fan of the Ultra-Thin slices from Sargento because they melt effortlessly and take the shape of the burger. 

Look at those blankets of cheese! I like when the cheese hits the griddle and crisps up a little, giving you a cheese skirt. 

Double stacked and racked smash burgers waiting for their bun. But first....

When we get smash burgers at Drakes, they come with the best deep-fried tots so that's what we do at home. We run them at 355°f in a deep-fryer until golden brown, just a couple of minutes. As soon as they come out, we hit them with either popcorn salt or the same finely ground NMT Beef Rub v.2 recipe that we use on the burgers.  

Hulk Smash!

I love diet cheat day.

Here's a video from when we made these same burgers later this week.

Want more inspiration, ideas, and recipes? Please check out my two books from Ulysses Press: 
The Kamado Smoker and Grill Cookbook and 
The Offset Smoker Cookbook.