Stuffed burgers

I'm not a horn-tooter, but if I had a horn, I would toot it over this recipe.  My burgers are always the thing that get the most compliments when we have parties.  I just sort of came up with these a couple years ago and now I always make them when we are feeding an army.  They are kind of a pain, but they are worth it in my horn-tooting opinion.  I actually didn't even get one on the 4th, sadface. 

It's not a real nailed down recipe.  This time I used 10 lbs of meat, which yields about 30 burgers.  I tend to use at least 2 different kinds of meat usually...sometimes I use half ground whitemeat turkey mixed with half hamburger to make them better for you, but this time I used half ground pork mixed with hamburger since we had a freezer full of it and turkey is extremely expensive at this point in time. 

You have all your meat thawed, unwrapped, and piled on the counter.  Now you add your fixin's!  I use a can of mushrooms, a bag of mixed cheese cubes, and usually about 1 habanero per 2 lbs of meat (diced extremely small, this gives the burgers some taste but not too much heat, kids even love them).  For some reason the habbies are not being sold right now...Im talking at any of the 3 stores I went to looking for them.  So I meant to use jalapenos instead, but we used all of those up in other dishes for the party...so we improvised.  I had about 5 cans of diced green chiles that I added to the pile of meat on the counter, and they seemed to work just fine.  You could add diced onions to them too, whatever fixin's you want mixed in to your burgers.

Now comes the fun part...season the pile with Lawry's, garlic powder, onion powder, and whatever else you would like to use. I used a little cayenne pepper this time as the green chiles aren't real hot so I was afraid they would lack flavor.  I usually over-season, because the taste gets cooked out, so when it looks like I've got too much, I add a little bit more before stopping.  Now it's time to get dirty!  Mix all your ingredients up very well before pattying...I'm talking squeaze all the meat between your fingers!  Mix, mix, mix, and then start pattying.  I use waxed paper to separate the burgers in the tupperware to store them before grill time.  Cook as you normally would, throw them on a bun, and you've got yourself a burger with so much good in every bite, you won't know what to do with yourself!  I have seriously had people comment on them when they are just grabbing cold ones that weren't eaten, and gnawing on them with no bun or toppings...and say they're the best burger they've had! 

The best thing about them is that if you make too many, you can throw them in the freezer and pull them out another time.  I usually make a big batch to bring in the RV for RAGBRAI so maybe I will remember to take pics of the process then for you....