There is a particular quiet that falls over a room when a pan of these comes out of the oven. Buttery golden tops, a sheet of seasoned beef and melted cheese underneath, and twelve little sandwiches that pull apart like they were always meant to.
HAAAAAM-Burger does the work here, and it does it twice: a tablespoon and a half stirred into the beef while it is still in the hot skillet, and another half tablespoon into the melted butter that gets brushed over the tops. The beef in a slider has no seared crust to hide behind, so the seasoning has to carry it.
This is make-ahead food, which is the real reason to keep it in your back pocket. Assemble the whole pan the night before, keep it covered in the refrigerator, and slide it into the oven when people are already in the house. Twenty minutes later you hand round a tray and nobody saw you do anything.
If what you actually want is sliders off a hot griddle, thin patties and crisp edges built one at a time, that is our Easy Smash Burger Sliders. This one is the other kind. Same seasoning, different evening.
Baked Cheeseburger Sliders with HAAAAAM-Burger
Twelve cheeseburger sliders baked on a slab of Hawaiian rolls with organic HAAAAAM-Burger seasoning in the beef and in the butter brushed over the tops.
Ingredients
For the pan
- 1 (12-count) package Hawaiian sweet rolls or soft dinner rolls, left connected as a slab
- 1 1/2 lb ground beef, 80/20
- 1 medium yellow onion, finely diced (about 3/4 cup)
- 1 1/2 Tbsp HAAAAAM-Burger organic seasoning, for the beef
- 2 Tbsp yellow mustard
- 1/2 cup dill pickle chips, patted dry
- 8 slices American or mild cheddar cheese
For the top
- 3 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
- 1/2 Tbsp HAAAAAM-Burger organic seasoning, for the butter
- 1 tsp sesame seeds, optional
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9x13 pan with parchment, or butter it lightly.
- Slice the whole slab of rolls in half horizontally with a long serrated knife, keeping the tops in one piece and the bottoms in one piece. Set the bottom slab into the pan, cut side up. Cutting them apart first is the mistake that turns this into twelve fiddly little sandwiches instead of one pan.
- Brown the beef and the onion in a large skillet over medium-high heat, breaking the meat into small crumbles, 7 to 8 minutes, until there is no pink left and the onion has gone soft.
- Stir 1 1/2 tablespoons of HAAAAAM-Burger into the meat in the last minute, off to one side of the pan where the fat has pooled if you can manage it. The seasoning blooms in hot fat and tastes twice as strong as the same spoonful stirred into raw mince.
- Tip the pan and spoon off the excess grease, then stir in the mustard. Two tablespoons sounds like a lot and it is not — it disappears into the beef and does the job ketchup pretends to do.
- Spread the beef over the bottom slab in an even layer, right out to the corners, so no roll ends up with only bread in it.
- Scatter the pickles over the beef, then lay the cheese across the top in an even sheet. Cap it with the top slab of rolls.
- Stir the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of HAAAAAM-Burger into the melted butter and brush it over the tops, getting into the seams. Scatter the sesame seeds over.
- Cover the pan loosely with foil and bake 15 minutes. Take the foil off and bake 5 minutes more, until the tops are deep golden and the cheese has melted through. The foil is what keeps those sweet tops from scorching before the middle is hot — it is the step most slider recipes leave out.
- Let the pan rest 5 minutes, then cut down the seams with a serrated knife and lift them out. Serve warm.
The seasoning goes in twice, and both times matter
One and a half tablespoons into the beef while it is still in the hot pan, half a tablespoon into the melted butter that goes over the tops. Two tablespoons in total, divided. Put it all in the beef and the first thing anybody tastes is plain sweet bread; put it all in the butter and the filling underneath is flat. The top is what hits your nose when the pan comes out of the oven, and it is worth half a spoonful.
Keep the slab whole
One long cut through the middle of the whole twelve-roll slab, tops in one piece, bottoms in one piece. It feels wrong the first time. It is the entire trick: the sides stay soft and joined, the filling cannot slide out, and they pull apart at the table the way they are meant to.
Foil on, then foil off
Fifteen minutes covered, five minutes uncovered. Hawaiian rolls are sweet, and sugar on top of a 350°F oven goes from golden to bitter faster than you would believe. Covered, the pan steams and the cheese melts through; uncovered at the end, the butter browns the tops properly.
What is actually in season right now
Yellow onions and garlic came out of the fall harvest across the Carolinas and will keep in a dark cupboard until spring, so this is the month to buy them by the bag. Collards are sweetening up after the first cool nights — a pot of them beside this pan is the Southern answer and costs almost nothing. Cabbage is in too, and a sharp vinegar slaw cuts through all that butter and cheese better than anything else on the table.
The rolls, the cheese, the pickles and the mustard came out of a package and we are not going to dress that up. If you want something that came out of the ground this week, put it beside the pan rather than in it: sweet potato wedges tossed with a little HAAAAAM-Burger and roasted at 425°F while the sliders bake, with the North Carolina harvest at its peak right now.
Which beef to buy
Eighty-twenty. Not ninety-ten. The fat is what carries the seasoning and what keeps the beef from going dry and crumbly under twenty minutes of oven heat, and you pour most of it off anyway before it goes in the pan. Leaner beef here gives you a tray of dry sandwiches.
Make it the day before
Assemble the whole pan through the butter step, cover it, and keep it in the refrigerator up to 24 hours. Add five minutes to the covered bake time to take the chill off. This is the single most useful thing about this recipe when people are coming over — the work happens the night before and the oven does the rest while everybody is already in the house.
Feeding more than twelve
Two pans, side by side on the same rack, same timing. The recipe scales cleanly because nothing in it is crowded. For a long table, cut each slider in half again once they are out and they go twice as far as part of a spread.
One seasoning doing all of it
HAAAAAM-Burger is our USDA Certified Organic burger and french fry blend, built for ground beef, with no MSG and no fillers, made in small batches by our family. It is the one seasoning in the cupboard that needs nothing added to it for a burger — which is exactly why it works here, where the beef has no crust to hide behind.
The seasoning itself is gluten free and kosher. The Hawaiian rolls are neither, and most sliced cheese is not kosher either, so read your own packages if that matters at your table. We make HAAAAAM-Burger in the 5 oz resealable pouch, which lies flat in the cupboard and opens one-handed with the other hand holding a spatula.
More to put beside it
If you came here for sliders and you want them off a hot griddle instead of out of the oven, Easy Smash Burger Sliders is that recipe — thin patties, crisp edges, built one at a time. This pan is the other kind: made ahead, baked, pulled apart. Same seasoning, different evening.
To round out the table, Crispy Oven Fries with Burger Sauce go in the oven the moment the sliders come out, Crispy Smashed Potatoes are the other good thing to do with a hot oven, and Game Day Buffalo Chicken Dip keeps everybody busy while the pan rests. For the rest of the week, One-Pot Cheeseburger Mac and Cheeseburger Stuffed Baked Potatoes are the same blend doing the same job on a weeknight, and Skillet Patty Melt is what to make when there are only two of you.