Smoked Hamburgers on the Kamado Joe

Up today are some Kamado Joe smoked hamburgers.

If you have never tried smoked hamburgers you’re in for a treat. Smoked hamburgers are real easy to make too.

You’ll need to make a bunch. The neighbors will be lining up in your backyard drooling and waiting for you to wrangle up their second helping of Kamado Joe smoked hamburgers.

So let’s get started …

Smoked Hamburgers on the Kamado Joe

We usually grill our burgers around 400 °F (205 °C) as measured on our Kamado Joe dome thermometer with the grill grate in the lowest position.

However, today is all about smoked hamburgers. But, you should still check out our earlier post here about grilling up delicious and flavorful burgers on the Kamado Joe.

Today, we’re aiming for 250 °F (121 °C) on the dome thermometer. For our smoked hamburgers, we’re going with the grill grate in the upper position.

Taking the heat box down a notch gives the burgers time to absorb more of that no calorie wood smoke flavoring. We don’t want to grill the burgers. Think more like barbecue, we want to bathe these meat patties in wood smoke flavor.

Our smoked hamburgers will be a bit larger than what we normally grill up around here. We’re making 6-ounce hamburger patties as measured on our digital food scale.

But, you can always divide the meat up into portions of whatever size or weight that you like, or you can just eyeball it.

On the otherhand, we don’t recommend going too much bigger than 6 ounces. Our experience is that a larger burger patty gets hard to manage, meaning that it tends to break apart if you move it much.

Tools and Supplies

Consider using a larger spatula to handle those bigger burger patties.

When smoking burgers, we’ll use our same Weber 6673 wide spatula we use for grilling fish. Check out the latest price and product information for the Weber 6673 wide spatula here on Amazon.com.

We also break out our Coleman Guide Series dual fuel camp stove to take care of the higher heat tasks when we barbecue. Like toasting the burger buns, prepping the baked beans for smoking, and cooking up some bacon strips to top the smoked burger.

The Coleman Guide Series dual fuel camp stove is a great outdoor cooking multipurpose must-have. Check out the latest price and product information here on Amazon. It’s not just for camping, and no need for a fancy outdoor kitchen setup.

Cast iron is a must have when cooking outdoors on the grill or camp stove. There is nothing better in our opinion.

Later we’ll talk more about why you need this Coleman Guide Series dual fuel camp stove and a stockpile of lump charcoal for your Kamado Joe in a future post.

Check out our book, Wood Smoke and Smoking Wood, available on Amazon. We talk about the types of smoking wood and meat parings, temperature control, and other how-to tips. Today, we’re using oak smoking wood.

We’re also going to need some barbecue towels to handle our cast iron cooking pans we’ll be using on our camp stove. You’re going to need them. Check out our earlier barbecue towel review here.

●  smoking wood, today we’re using oak
●  barbecue towels
●  cast iron griddle, for cooking up our bacon, outdoor style
●  paper towels and cooking oil for cleaning the grill grate

How to Smoke Burgers on the Kamado Joe

Okay, we got most of the preparation how-to figured out. Let’s get making some of those flavorful smoked hamburgers!

Ingredients

●  80/20 ground chuck, 6 ounces per smoked burger
●  kosher salt to taste
●  fresh ground black pepper to taste
●  burger buns
●  optional: butter, for toasting the burger buns
●  burger fixings, mustard, jalapeno peppers, onions
●  optional: cheese
●  optional: bacon

Why do we use ground chuck here? Check out our earlier Kamado Joe Burgers – Meat Matters post here.

Method

Preheat and stabilize your Kamado Joe at 250 °F (121 °C) with the grill grate in the upper position. No need for the heat deflector today. Don’t forget that smoking wood. Our smoked hamburgers won’t have much time in the smoke bath, so we need to be somewhat aggressive in our smoking wood choice.

Clean and oil the grill grate. A clean and well-oiled grill grate enables an easy release smoked hamburger. To oil the grate, just fold up a paper towel, saturate with cooking oil and rub it over the grill grate using your grilling tongs. Repeat this several times.

Form up your burger patties however big you want them. Finally, lay them out on your grill grate and close the dome lid for smoking.

We’ll wood smoke our 6-ounce burgers for about 15 minutes.

If you’re using your camp stove, it’s time to get your cast iron griddle preheated and ready for action.

Add an optional dab of butter to your burger buns and go for a nice toasting on the camp stove.

Get your bacon cooking on the cast iron griddle. Today we’re cooking up some Canadian bacon leftover from a breakfast cookout.

Optional step, when that burger is finished smoking, slide that spatula up under the smoked hamburger and place it on hot griddle for a quick sear. This optional step will give the smoked hamburger a slight bit of flavorful char. Sometimes we’ll to this, sometimes we’ll add cheese, and sometimes we’ll skip this all together.

Smoked Hamburgers – Taste Test

For our smoked hamburgers, we like to layer them up with some green stuff, mustard, pickled jalapenos, few onion slices, and bacon if we have it. Nothing too fancy here. Just plain ole’ burger topping goodness.

To wash it all down, nice IPA pairs well with a smoked hamburger. Smoked burgers with all of your toppings hold a lot of flavor. That’s where IPAs can deliver. An IPA provides that bitter taste that is missing from smoked savory foods like our burgers.

The hoppy flavor also compliments the taste of the smoked burger, the spice of the jalapenos, and the sharpness of the onion.

Nope, it doesn’t get any better than this.

A 5-star, backyard, fine dining experience!

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