Irish pub burgers are a delicious way to celebrate St. Patty’s Day! These beef burgers have Irish Cheddar, a homemade stout bbq sauce, and bacon on them. Serve with boiled salted potatoes.
It’s St. Patty’s Day! I love this holiday because it means we can make yummy festive food, like these Irish Cheddar and Bacon Pub Burgers. Bonus points because we also have a homemade BBQ sauce recipe for you too. We used the Niman Ranch Bacon from our local Whole Foods Market.
I don’t eat pork but The Beard, Baby O and our pup, Herbert do and they were quite excited about this selection. I usually make them eat turkey bacon and let’s just all admit it’s not even close to the same as pork bacon.
We baked our bacon on a foil-lined baking sheet topped with a cooling rack. This seriously helps to control all that grease and makes sure you don’t have a huge amount of cleaning to do after cooking bacon.
I will tell you that this is actually part of the reason I stopped eating pork and bacon, specifically. I was volunteering at a summer camp and had to cook bacon for like 500 people at like 6 am, and the grease got all over me and it was fairly traumatic. So, this is way less scary than that scenario.
How to make Irish bbq sauce.
You can make your bacon or your BBQ sauce first and just let it hang out since both are fine to eat at room temperature. If you want your bacon to be really hot, you can even make it while your burgers are cooking.
But, we find that doing one that at a time causes less cooking mistakes. I swear this isn’t meant to be a blog post about things Hannah doesn’t like but I will say that I’m not a big ketchup person but I LOVE BBQ sauce. This makes no sense because BBQ sauce is like 85% ketchup.
Something I thoroughly enjoy is beer, so I totally approved of this Breckenridge Brewing Nitro Irish Stout joining our BBQ sauce. We also buy bottled BBQ sauce because there are some really great options out there.
But, it doesn’t take any time to whip one up yourself and always tastes delicious. Think about this when you go to your next summer cookout and be the one who brings homemade BBQ sauce!
While we let our BBQ sauce simmer and great ready, we whipped up our burgers.
How to make burger meat.
We had a chuck roast that we wanted to use for our Irish pub burgers so The Beard used his meat cleaver and coarsely chopped it up for burger meat. Again, you don’t have to make your burgers this way and can just purchase coarsely ground beef from the grocery store.
We made two bigger patties for the parents and two smaller ones for Baby O and Herbert. Everyone gets to enjoy burger night in our household.
Indoor cooked burgers are best made with cast iron and we use Lodge pans because they are the best. Obviously, grilled burgers in the summer are actually the best but March in Ohio isn’t actually grilling weather.
If you are intimidated by cast iron or don’t know how to take care of it, they have a ton of great tips on their website here!
Ah, this cheese is so good and one of The Beard’s favorites. We usually use the Kerrygold Cheddar but Kroger was out of it so we opted for Murray’s Irish Cheddar and it was just as absolutely delicious.
When you’re ready to make your cheese nice and melty, just toss it on the burgers and get ready for magic. Grab about 1-1/2 Tablespoons of water, toss it into the pan and cover with a lid. This helps create some steam which promptly melts the cheese for the burgers.
How to make salted boiled potatoes.
One more of our favorite “Irish” recipes is salted boiled potatoes! We get these every year at the Dublin Irish Festival which makes me feel like they are authentic. Regardless, they are delicious and soft and salty and perfect with our homemade BBQ sauce.
You basically just boil them in a very very salty water bath and when you let them drain, all that flavor is on top of the potatoes. I adore them and think they need to make an apperance in our kitchen more than just once a year.
Oh, and did I mention that you also toss them in melted butter? Yeah, they are seriously delicious. Oh, I should also mention that you should use smaller potatoes as opposed to big potatoes because these are meant to be little and bite-sized-ish.
A few more Irish recipes.
Our last little bit of Irish theme is serving our fabulous burgers on potato buns! We’re just so festive, I can’t handle it. But, if you want some additional Irish inspired recipes, we’ve got you covered.
- Lucky Charms Latte. I will never not love this recipe. Use cereal milk with Lucky Charms to make a super festive coffee drink.
- Corned Beef Dumplings. These dumplings are a delicious way to use leftover corned beef.
- Corned Beef Pizza. This pizza is weirdly incredible. It’s made with leftover corned beef and a homemade Guinness bbq sauce. Delicious.
Irish Pub Burgers
Ingredients
Irish Cheddar and Bacon Pub Burgers
- 1 lb chuck roast or coarsely ground beef
- 8-10 pieces of bacon
- 2-4 slices of Irish Cheddar Cheese
- granulated roasted garlic
- granulated onion
- salt and pepper
- lettuce
- potato buns
Irish Stout BBQ Sauce
- 2 cups of ketchup
- 1/4 apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 3/4 cup Irish Stout note not entire can
- 1 Tablespoon BBQ seasoning
Irish Salted Potatoes
- 2 pounds petite gold potatoes
- 8 cups water
- 1 1/3 cup kosher salt
- 1/2 cup butter melted
Instructions
Irish Cheddar and Bacon Pub Burgers
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Prepare bacon by lining a sheet pan with foil then placing bacon on a cooling rack on top of foil lined baking sheet. Cook for 20-25 minutes or until desired crispiness.
- If preparing burger meat at home, using a meat cleaver, coarsely chop the chuck roast.
- Then, form beef into patties, about 3-4 and season with salt, pepper, granulated garlic and onion.
- Cook in a cast iron skillet for 3 minutes on each side, until internal temperature is at least 145 degrees F (for medium-rare).
- Then, top with your slices of Irish Cheddar and let it melt in the pan.
- Remove burgers and top with lettuce and BBQ sauce on a potato bun. Serve alongside salted Irish potatoes!
Irish Stout BBQ Sauce
- Add all ingredients to a pot on the stove. Bring to a boil then let simmer, stirring every few minutes, for at least 30 minutes. Continue to cook for a thicker sauce.
Irish Salted Potatoes
- Bring water to a boil and add in salt. Stir in salt until completely dissolved.
- Slowly add potatoes and then cover.
- Boil for at least 20 minutes but up to 30, depending on size of potatoes.
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