Pepper Crusted Filet Mignon Burger video
This is my video response to Ballistic BBQ's YouTube contest
Hope you approve and perhaps take the time to leave a comment!
(Closed captioning available on this video)
- 1¼ pound (90/10) angus beef
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 tablespoons chives, minced
- 3 tablespoons butter, softened
- 1½ ounce blue cheese, crumbled
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 3 tablespoons freshly cracked peppercorns
- 1 tablespoon coarse salt
- 1 tablespoon sweet sauce
- 2 tablespoons onions, crispy
- Soak cedar plank in water.
- Prepare chive butter by mixing together softened butter, chives and blue cheese.
- Get it thoroughly mixed and then set the butter aside.
- Pour olive oil in a pan and drop in a freshly ground pepper.
- Put it on heat and let the pepper simmer in oil until it releases its aroma, roughly 5 minutes.
- Transfer to a bowl and let it cool down to room temperature. Mix salt and set this salt pepper blend aside.
- Preheat the grill.
- Divide Angus beef into 2 portions.
- Take each part and form a burger out of it.
- Apply salt and pepper blend on both sides of the burgers and wrap them into saran wrap as seen in video.
- Pat to firm the pepper on both sides.
- Drop olive oil on Island Grillstone.
- Remove the burgers from the saran wrap and place them on the grill.
- Sear them on both sides for about 2 minutes each.
- Meanwhile, place cedar planks on the grill to prepare for cooking.
- Transfer the burgers to cedar plank and place the planks on to the island grill stone.
- Bring up the grill temperature to about 325 F.
- Cook the burgers under the dome for about 8 to 10 minutes or until the internal meat temperature reaches up to 140 F.
- Drizzle some sweet sauce on the serving dish.
- Put some crispy fried onion rings on top.
- Arrange the burger over the onions and then top up with chive butter.
Video Transcript:
Presenter:
Gary House with Cooking Everything Outdoors.
Just recently Ballistic BBQ threw down a challenge of the hamburger contest.
They are looking for the best hamburger recipe from the best cooks.
And I am stepping up to plate because I think that’s me.
What do you think?
I’m bringing it.
Announcer:
Gary House with the outdoor cook Cooking Everything Outdoors show, I hope you try this at home.
Presenter:
Accepting the Ballistic BBQ challenge means I have to come up with my favorite recipe.
Well, it’s a can of worms to open up right there, buddy.
But I’ll tell you what, I just recently learned how to make the most incredible filet mignon I’ve ever eaten in my life.
And I think I can pull that off with a hamburger.
This is my pepper crusted blue cheese chive herbed buttered filet mignon burger.
This is what we’re going to do first.
We’ve got to make our butter.
Chives, I’m going to need 2 tablespoons minced chives.
Easy enough to do.
It can be approximate.
It doesn’t have to be exactly.
2 tablespoons.
Make sure your knife is razor sharp.
We don’t want to crush these.
We want them minced.
Right there, roughly 2 tablespoons of minced chives.
I have 3 tablespoons of softened butter.
We’re going to need about an ounce and a half of blue cheese.
This is some wonderful crumbled blue cheese aged in a cave.
I just love this stuff.
It’s very aromatic.
Really wonderful.
What is 1 and 1/2?
Looks like about 2 tablespoons to me.
Don’t worry about measuring it.
We just want that flavor, that aroma, gosh the aroma, this is going to ooze out of this thing.
So we need to blend it all together.
Just take a fork soften butter and start making nice little butter blend.
Just get it thoroughly mixed.
You already can smell the chives releasing their pungent aroma.
Blue cheese is also releasing.
So we get it blended up just about like that.
I’m going to have roughly 4 tablespoons of blended blue cheese and chive butter.
I’m going to set that aside.
What we’re going to do next is make our pepper crust for our filet mignon burgers.
And it’s really, really simple.
If you have a side burner, easy enough to do to put your skillet on top of that.
And in this case I don’t have a side burner.
I’m going to pop it in the kettle.
So I’m heating it up right now and getting it super hot.
But what we’re going to need is 3 tablespoons of olive oil.
And 3 tablespoons of freshly cracked peppercorns.
I’m using a rainbow peppercorn, so they get a little bit more heat in my opinion, but you could use all black, and the flavor and aromas when you’re cracking these are just incredible.
So what we’re going to do is we’re going to temper this taste though, it’s not an overwhelmingly powerful pepper burn when we eat into our steak.
Filet mignon stake burgers.
So 3 tablespoons of olive oil.
3 tablespoons of crushed fresh black pepper or rainbow pepper if you have it.
So what we’re going to do is we’re going to put this in our barbecue and we’re going to heat this up until it is a slow simmer and at that point it’s going to start releasing its fragrances, its aromas and we’re going to just let that simmer for probable 5 minutes, just stirring it a little bit.
And then we’re going to pull it and show you what to do next.
Just want to take a second and show you what it’s going to look like while it’s simmering.
You can see the bubbles.
Just basically cooking that pepper.
Starting to smell the pepper aromas coming through.
That’s what we are looking for.
We’re going to do this for about 5 minutes.
Time me.
Been about 5 minutes, peppers are done.
Can really smell the aromas.
Now this is a screaming hot pan.
You do not just want to walk in there, reach in and grab it.
Double up.
Yeah, look at that.
Just beautiful.
Smells incredible.
Now we’ve got to let this cool off.
And cool off fast.
So I am going to transfer it out of this really hot pan before we burn any of it.
And we’re going to let that cool down to room temperature.
Okay.
Hot.
You can see what we’re cooking on, stone.
Let’s shut this down.
Part 3 is to make our filet mignon burgers.
Now probably up to this point you thought I was actually going to use ground-up filet mignon.
No.
Not on my budget.
Maybe yours and if you do, invite me over.
But it’s the same concept.
We’re going for a super thick hamburger.
Now filet mignons are about an inch and a half to 2 inches thick for a really good one, about like that.
And if you’ve ever tried to cook a hamburger, that thick, you’d run into problems.
Typically you get a greasy ball.
Uncooked, burned on the outside, somewhat rear on the inside.
Very difficult to do.
But with the technique that I’m going to show you, you’re going to ace that.
You’re going to be able to present a monster hamburger that looks like a filet mignon.
Very cool.
So what I have here is about a pound and a quarter of 90/10 beef.
Pretty lean.
I don’t need a lot of fat in this.
I don’t want it to swell up.
So what we’re going to do is form 2 nice big filet mignon burgers.
I don’t work this an awful lot.
So basically we’re going to cut it in half, form it, and then top it with our crusted black pepper.
Now roughly equal portions.
So we’re talking about 3/4 pound of burger here.
Just get it worked together.
I’m not adding anything to this.
We want it to taste like the beef.
But we’re super enhancing the crust.
What is a filet mignon look like?
Just about like that.
Have you had a burger like that?
I don’t think so.
Okay, we’re going to form the other one and I’ll show you how to put the pepper crusting on.
So now we have both of my patties formed.
They are easily 2 inches thick.
Challenge to grill, maybe.
So I have my roasted crushed black pepper.
I’m going to add a teaspoon of coarse salt to that.
I’m going to mix it up.
This is going to give you that nice salt pepper blend that we all enjoy so much.
And then what I want to do is take roughly a fourth of this and I am going to apply it to the top of my burger making a beautiful thick pepper crust.
Excuse me.
Just like so.
Okay, see where I’m going with this?
Now I’m going to flip this over very carefully, keeping it on my wrap, Saran Wrap, if you will, keep the patty formed properly and put the other coating on there.
Don’t need it on the sides, but if a little bit dribbles over there no big deal.
Now, we need to basically press this pepper crusting into our burger.
And I’m going to do that by wrapping it up in the Saran Wrap nice and tightly.
That way I can manipulate the form of the filet mignon burger and get that pressed in there nicely.
And you can just see how well that works.
Okay.
I’m going to do this one more time.
So, now I have 2 2-inch thick black–excuse me–pepper crusted filet mignon burgers.
These are ready to go on the grill now.
But we just can’t throw it on the grill.
We are going to sear them on the Island Grillstone and then once we’ve built the crust up on both sides I’m going to bake them on a cedar plank to finish it all off.
Now it’s time to put this on the grill.
You just set for maybe 10 minutes while I preheat my Grillstone inside my barbecue.
I’ve taken the time to soak up some cedar planks which I’m going to finish my recipe on.
Now when you cook filet mignon you just don’t throw it in the pan or throw it in the oven or really probably not even throw it on the grill because it’s so thick.
And one of the tricks with filet mignon is to sear it and then bake it.
That’s very common in restaurants where you get a really good filet mignon.
And that’s exactly what we’re going to do here right now.
So I have a very, very hot stone.
I’m going to put just put a little bit of olive oil in there.
My stone’s fairly well seasoned.
I’ll just get a little bit on there to help with the sear and we’re going to unwrap these bad boys and place them on the grill.
What we want to do is sear them for just 2, maybe 3 minutes on each side.
I’m just building up a crust.
Oh, those look beautiful and they’re a little messy.
Okay, number 1.
Yeah, hear it.
That’s what we’re looking for.
Number 2.
Shape is perfect.
Keep it separate a little bit so the heat will surround it.
In about 2 minutes I’m going to flip it.
So our first side’s been on about 2 minutes.
I also took the cedar planks and put them in there to get them ready.
Now we need to flip our filet mignon burger.
Kind of tough to get a spatula under there because we could break the crust.
So typically what we’ll do is we’ll go in with a pair of tongs on these.
Take a look here, releases nicely and look at that.
Okay, one more.
Carefully, it’s hot.
Right there.
Nice crust.
Got some browning going on
I’m going to do the same thing on the other side, 2 minutes.
Alright, done searing the other side.
I need to get these on the planks.
So you can see seared on both sides really, really beautiful.
I’m going to turn my planks over.
The cedar aroma that’s coming through is just incredible.
Now the reason I want to do this is to separate the burger from the searing heat.
We’ll just take this one and set it right there.
This one and set it right there.
Let me get that stone cleaned a little bit.
And I’m still going to use this stone, but I’m using the cedar planks to accent the flavors.
Set that right there.
Set that right there.
Now I’m going to seal this up because our hamburgers are still raw inside, it hasn’t been enough time to cook them in there.
And I’m going to turn this down.
I want to get it down to about 325 degrees.
In fact I’m going to turn the center burner off.
So we’ll watch the temperature.
This is going to cook for maybe probably 5 to 7 minutes more.
I’m going to get them just about medium, is what I personally like.
So let’s see what happens.
They’ve been baking for a little while.
I’m at 140.
I’m going to pull them.
They’re going to cook a little bit more.
I’m going to get around 145.
You can cook it for a lot less if you want.
Just take a peek at these.
Look at that.
Maintain their shape.
Look like filet mignon.
Nice.
I’m going to turn off the heat.
Let them set there for a bit.
I’m going to decorate this plate up and I’ll show you how we’d put it all together.
Pepper crusted blue cheese and chive butter filet mignon burgers.
Let’s get a little plating done here.
Let’s get a little sweet on our plate just for some decoration, it’s nothing fancy.
Nice crispy fried onion rings.
A little bit more.
Just get a little sweet, a little crunch.
Now we need a little burger.
Whew!
Look at that.
Hmm, pepper is just absolutely incredible.
Remember our chive blue cheese butter that we made up earlier.
And we just want to get a little topping on there.
And that’s going to melt in to our burger.
Like there’s no tomorrow.
Well Ballistic BBQ stepped up to the plate.
This is my creation, filet Mignon burger.
Always love your talent Gary. This recipe has got to be among your best. Thank you for sharing it with all of us.