Smoked Green Chili Cheeseburgers on the Kamado Joe

Today we are making up a batch of our smoked green chili cheeseburgers.

Fire-roasted green chili peppers for smoked green chili cheeseburgers are real easy to make and take no time. So if you haven’t made fire-roasted green chili cheeseburgers before, then you need to check this out.

You’ll be missing out if you don’t. Because green chili cheeseburgers might be the best thing you ever ate?

You’ll need to make a bunch of these once the neighbors find out what you’re up to; they’ll be climbing over your fence to get one.

Fire Roasted Green Chili Cheeseburgers

You’ve heard about them, green chili cheeseburgers, and now you want to try your hand at making some. And today, we’re kicking ours up a notch by smoking our burgers. But you can make your burgers how you want. You can read our earlier post here on making smoked hamburgers or just use your favorite burger recipe.

Making our smoked green chili cheeseburgers is real easy to do and takes very little time.

Above all, the aroma of those green chili peppers sizzling and roasting on your grill grates is tantalizing. So breathe deep and savor the experience.

Supplies Needed

Firstly, our smoked hamburgers won’t be exposed to wood smoke all that long as they cook to temperature. So we’re going to be aggressive with our choice of smoking wood and using hickory for our smoked green chili cheeseburgers. For more information on wood smoke and smoking wood, check out our book here on Amazon.

smoking wood of choice, we’re using hickory today
burger spatula
grilling tongs
small bowl, we’re using this to steam our fire roasted green chili peppers
plastic wrap
cutting board
heat resistant gloves, we use these
barbecue towels, we wrote about the need to have dedicated barbecue towels here, using the good kitchen towels doesn’t end well
instant read thermometer; we use this one

Ingredients

To start with, we’re using 5-ounce burger patties today. But you can size yours up or down as you want. We find that larger burger patties get difficult to work with when we smoke them as they tend to break apart. For larger burger patties, you’ll need a larger burger flipper. We use this Weber 6673 wide grilling spatula for larger patties and for fish.

We’re using Anaheim chili peppers today because that is what our local grocer had. However, use fresh in-season hatch green chili peppers if you can find them. They look pretty much the same. The hatch chili peppers are somewhat hotter than the Anaheim chili peppers. When choosing your green chili peppers, go for the mid-sized because larger green chili peppers take longer to blister and blacken on the grill.

Here is what you need per burger
1 Hatch, Anaheim, or Cubanelle chili pepper for each green chili cheeseburger
cooking oil for coating the chili peppers
5-ounce burger patties
kosher salt to taste for the burger patties
1 burger bun, today we’re using a brioche burger bun
1 slice pepper jack cheese for each burger
butter for toasting the burger bun

Method

We’re using our Kamado Joe ceramic cooker for making our smoked green chili cheeseburgers. You don’t really need a ceramic cooker to make these, so use the outdoor cooker you have.

Firstly, we will make the fire-roasted green chili cheeseburger toppings.

Secondly, we’ll follow that up with toasting the burger buns with a dab of butter.

Lastly, we’ll smoke our burgers and then add some cheese.

Fire Roasted Green Chili Peppers

To start, rinse those green chili peppers under cool water to remove any debris or other preservatives the grocery store supply chain might have used. Next, dry them with a paper towel. Then lightly coat them up with cooking oil.

After lighting up the grill, place your cooking grate in the lowest position closest to the charcoal.

Then, lay out your oil-coated green chili peppers on the grill grate over the hot part of the charcoal. Turn occasionally.

You want to see the green chili pepper skin start blistering and turning black. This might take up to 20 minutes if your trying to keep your grill around 250 °F (121 °C) for the later smoking of the burger patties.

The aroma of fire-roasting green chili peppers is amazing. So enjoy the experience.

Then, remove the green chili peppers after they have blackened, blistered, and softened on all sides. Next, put them in your small bowl and cover them with plastic wrap.

Finally, let the green chili peppers steam for about 15 minutes. While the green chili peppers are steaming, let’s get the burger buns toasted.

Toasting the Burger Buns

Toasted burger buns add another layer of flavor to our smoked green chili cheeseburgers.

To start, put your grill grate at the highest position. Then put your buttered burger buns on the grate. Burger buns go from buttered to burned in no time at all. So watch out for flare-ups and check frequently. That Weber wide spatula is handy here. Remove them from the grill when they are toasted to your liking.

Next, we will prepare the grill to smoke our green chili cheeseburger patties. While the grill stabilizes at the desired cooking temperature, 250 °F (121 °C) we can finish making the fire roasted green chili burger topping.

Fire Roasted Green Chili Burger Topping

After the green chili peppers have steamed for about 15 minutes, put them on your cutting board. Do not rinse them; you’ll wash that sought-after fire-roasted flavor down the drain. We want to keep that.

Firstly, cut off the pepper top and stem and pull out the seed core.

Next, cut into strips and give it a rough to medium chop. They’re now ready to top your cheeseburgers.

So wasn’t that easy?

Later, if there are any leftover fire-roasted green chili peppers, just refrigerate them. For example, we like to heat the leftover fire-roasted green chili peppers to top the morning sausage, egg, and cheese biscuits. They are so good!

Smoking the Burgers

Firstly, move the grill grate to the highest position and add your smoking wood of choice to the charcoal. Then stabilize your cooker at 250 °F (121 °C) as measured on the Kamado Joe dome thermometer. We’re not using our Kamado Joe heat deflector.

Make your burger patties as big as you want; we use 5-ounce patties. Then sprinkle on a layer of kosher salt.

Arrange the burger patties on the grill grates. Allow yourself enough room to get that spatula in and around your burgers because you’ll need space to flip them.

Your smoked burgers won’t get those grill sear marks because we’re cooking at lower temperatures. So it might take 10 to 15 minutes to smoke them until done. Then use your instant-read thermometer to measure the internal temperature. The USDA says ground beef is safe when cooked to an internal minimum temperature of 160 °F (71 °C).

If you want that seared burger exterior, pull them from the grill and get the heat to somewhere around 400 °F (205 °C), as measured on the dome thermometer. Sometimes we do this; sometimes, we don’t. Then at other times, we’ll have our Coleman camp stove preheated and ready with a cast iron pan to do the searing.

As the burgers approach your desired doneness, add a slice or two of your favorite cheese, we like pepper jack.

Taste Test

Get that smoked cheeseburger patty on the toasted bun and top it with a heap of fire-roasted green chili peppers. No, nothing else is needed. Nothing other than perhaps your cold beverage of choice.

All I can say is wow, this thing is good. So if you haven’t made fire roasted green chili cheeseburgers before, then you need to check this out. You’ll be missing out if you don’t. This might be the best thing you ever ate?

Check out my other Kamado Joe and JoeTisserie recipes and links here on my Outdoor Eats page.