I don’t recall ever making stuffed burgers but for beef either blue cheese or cooked mushrooms might be nice.

I've never made a stuffed burger. I'm not sure it appeals to me. A good, hearty, well-made (beef) burger doesn't need fussing up.

I also have one of those presses....I haven't gotton it out in ages.

1) Bacon

2) Chopped bell pepper + onion + jalapeno

3) chili sauce or jalapeno cheese slice

It’s been a long time, but I’ve done it with a mix of blue cheese and butter.

I made lamburgers stuffed with goat cheese and fresh mozzarella a while back. Delicious!

Stuffed burgers were(are?) a fad in Minneapolis a decade or more ago. They call them a Juicy Lucy. I bought one of the presses and tried them a couple times at home and wasn't impressed. They are difficult to cook since they are so thick and they seemed to 'spring a leak' of the stuffing easily. I find it much easier to use the stuffing ingredients as normal toppings of a burger.

IIRC I used mushrooms, onions, bacon bits, and cheese of some sort as the stuffing.

All your interesting stuffings sound good, but I've also never had a stuffed burger that I liked. That's probably becasue I want the meat cooked through. LoneJack's post made it make sense for me. Getting it cooked enough probably also makes it more likely to leak, and turn itnto a so what. I just remember messy and undercooked with burnt bits outside. I can see where if you like med-rare it probably works a lot better, and if you can do it so the center is warm and the texture is right and it's not falling apart, etc., it might be quite nice to find the stuffing, like a hidden treat.. Thanks Jack, for the insights.

My memory just jogged a bit and I seem to recall there was a chef somewhere who recommended putting a small icecube in the centre of a beef patty to keep the burger juicy and also rare in the middle while the outside got crispy. Of course, you could only do that with ground beef you really trusted.

But... ..? Don't you get steamed meat that way?

The inside of a burger shouldn’t approach steaming temp, and even if it did the meat is more than half water so I figure it’d be steaming anyway without the added water. But I’m not sure the need for an ice cube, charring outside while keeping inside rare is a matter of turning up the heat, no?

Oh! I get that now. Pan screaming hot is way different than inside cold meat, and ice will melt at cool. I just dislike a sear that's actually steamed, and didn't think it through past that. Thanks!

I'm not sure about char + rare, but yes, in general, high heat on the outside tends to out run cold in the center, whether it's meat, bread, pie or pumpkin. Same in reverse, we're taught that strongly chilling a hot pot of sauce or stew will create a thermal thingamajig that keeps the middle warmer longer and potentially dangerouus. There's a whole long thing about heat exchange which someone better schooled han I can weigh in on. I was never good at physics.

The closest I come to a stuffed burger is a Scotch egg.

Oooh, Scotch eggs! Love those! (hard-boiled only, please)

I also like scotch eggs and haven't made them in a long time. I have lots of eggs, so maybe tomorrow.

I like my burgers on the rare side and since I grow my own beef I'm confident doing that. However, I'm pretty apathetic about cheese and dislike blue (or bleu, whatever) cheese. I'm thinking maybe carmelized onions would be good, possibly with some mushrooms although I've never made a stuffed burger. We did have burgers for supper, along with homemade fries, but not stuffed.

Islay was talking about salmon burgers, though, with a seafood filling, which sounds really good to me. I might also like something like a pineapple or mango salsa in there, I'm tossing that around in my head now.

Annie