Camp Cheeseburger with Blackberry Chili Sauce
Beef patties on a grate, sharp cheese, and a blackberry-chili sauce mixed in a cup.
- calories
- 880
- weight
- 14 oz
- cal / oz
- 63
- protein
- 45 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 45 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Grill grate
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Real dishes
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Ground beef, 80/20 | 14 oz | the fat is what keeps it from drying on a grate |
|---|---|---|
| Bacon | 3 oz | cooked crisp and crumbled |
| Comté or other aged cheese | 1 oz | shaved thin so it melts fast |
| Blackberries | 10 | or 2 tbsp blackberry jam |
| Fresh chili | 1 | seeded unless you want it hot |
| BBQ sauce | 4 tbsp | |
| Mayonnaise | 4 tbsp | split between the two sauces |
| Honey | 2 tbsp | |
| Lime | 1 | zest and juice |
| Hot mustard | 4 tbsp | |
| Pointed cabbage | 1/2 head | shredded at home |
| Onion | 1 | |
| Whole grain mustard | 2 tbsp | |
| White vinegar | 50 ml | |
| Butter | 25 g | |
| Cooking oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Butternut squash | 1/2 | cut into 1/2-inch slabs at home |
| Portobello or large button mushrooms | 3 | |
| Soy sauce | 2 tbsp | |
| Burger buns | 2 | |
| Lettuce hearts | 2 | |
| Salt | to taste |
Method
- Get a bed of coals going and set the grate about four inches above it. You want steady heat, not flames.
- Lay the bacon in a skillet on the grate. Cook until it stiffens, pull it onto a plate, and crumble it once cool. Leave the fat in the pan.
- Crush the blackberries in a cup with a fork. Stir in the BBQ sauce, 2 tbsp mayonnaise, honey, chopped chili, half the lime zest and juice, and a pinch of salt.
- In a second cup, stir the hot mustard with the remaining 2 tbsp mayonnaise and the rest of the lime zest and juice.
- Slice the onion and cook it in the bacon fat with the oil until soft. Add the cabbage, whole grain mustard, vinegar, and butter. Cover and cook about eight minutes, until the cabbage collapses. Salt it and set the pan off the heat.
- Oil the squash slabs and mushrooms, brush with soy sauce, and grill them directly on the grate, four to five minutes a side, until marked and tender.
- Form the beef into two thick patties and salt them right before they hit the grate. Four minutes a side, one flip. Lay the cheese on in the last minute and let the residual heat take it.
- Toast the buns cut side down for thirty seconds. Build: mustard sauce on the bottom, lettuce, patty, blackberry sauce, bacon crumbles, cabbage. Squash and mushrooms alongside.
This is a car-camp burger, not a trail meal, and there is no honest way to shrink it into a pot. It leans on a cooler and about twenty minutes of knife work, so do the cutting at home and treat camp as assembly plus fire.
The blackberry sauce is doing the heavy lifting. Fruit and honey against BBQ sauce and chili gives the patty something acidic to push back on, which matters more over coals than on a stove because grill smoke flattens everything it touches. The cabbage cooked in vinegar, mustard, and bacon fat plays the same role from the other side. Both can be made ahead, which is the only reason the whole thing lands in twenty-five minutes of actual cooking.
Packing
Shred the cabbage and slab the squash at home so you are not doing knife work on a picnic table. Both sauces can be mixed in jars before you leave and ride in the cooler. Beef, bacon, cheese, and butter are all cooler items with a one-night ceiling in warm weather.
Variations
- Blackberry jam thinned with a splash of vinegar replaces fresh berries and skips the cooler entirely.
- No grate: cook the patties and vegetables in the same cast iron skillet, patties last so they pick up the bacon fat.
- Skip the bun and eat it over the cabbage if you want to carry less.
https://petromax.de/blogs/andi-schweiger/cheese-burger-mit-grillgemuse-brombeer-chili-dip-spitzkraut-und-speckchips