A cheeseburger is really just beef, cheese and something to hold it together. Swap the bun for a baked potato with a crackly skin and you get everything good about a cheeseburger, eaten with a fork, with no bun to go soft on you.
These are a weeknight supper and a crowd dinner at the same time. The potatoes bake on their own for an hour while you cook a pound of ground beef, so the whole thing costs you about fifteen minutes of actual work. Set the cheddar, the pickles and the burger sauce out in bowls and ten people can build their own.
The seasoning is doing the work here. HAAAAAM-Burger is our organic hamburger and french fry blend, and the trick is to sprinkle it into the hot fat in the pan rather than over the finished beef — thirty seconds in the grease and it goes right through the meat instead of sitting on top of it.
North Carolina sweet potatoes are at their peak this month, so bake a couple of those on the rack alongside the russets and let everyone take their pick. There is a shredded cabbage slaw in the notes that turns this into the whole plate.
Cheeseburger Stuffed Baked Potatoes with HAAAAAM-Burger
Cheeseburger stuffed baked potatoes with crackly russet skins, seasoned ground beef, melted sharp cheddar, pickles and burger sauce, made with organic HAAAAAM-Burger.
Ingredients
For the potatoes
- 4 large russet potatoes (about 10 to 12 oz each), scrubbed and dried
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
For the cheeseburger filling
- 1 lb ground beef, 80/20 — the fat is what carries the seasoning
- 1 Tbsp HAAAAAM-Burger organic seasoning
- 1/2 small yellow onion, finely diced
- 2 Tbsp ketchup
- 1 Tbsp yellow mustard
- 1 1/2 cups sharp cheddar, shredded off the block, divided
For the burger sauce
- 1/4 cup mayonnaise
- 1 Tbsp ketchup
- 2 tsp dill pickle brine, straight from the jar
- 1/2 tsp HAAAAAM-Burger organic seasoning
To finish
- 1/3 cup dill pickle chips, chopped
- 2 Tbsp red onion, finely diced
- 2 scallions, thinly sliced (optional)
- Kosher or flaky sea salt, to taste at the table
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 425°F. Pierce each potato five or six times with a fork, then rub it all over with the olive oil. The holes let steam out and the oil is what crisps the skin.
- Bake the potatoes directly on the oven rack for 55 to 65 minutes, until a paring knife slides into the middle with no resistance at all. Not on a pan, and not wrapped in foil. Foil traps steam and you get a damp, papery skin instead of a crackly one, and the skin is half the reason to make these.
- While the potatoes bake, make the burger sauce so it has time to sit. Whisk the mayonnaise, ketchup, pickle brine and the 1/2 teaspoon of HAAAAAM-Burger together in a small bowl and put it in the refrigerator.
- Set a large skillet over medium-high. Add the ground beef and the diced yellow onion, break the beef into small pieces and cook 6 to 8 minutes until it is browned through and no pink is left.
- Drain off most of the fat, leaving about a tablespoon in the pan. Sprinkle in the tablespoon of HAAAAAM-Burger and stir it for 30 seconds. You want it hitting hot fat, not cold beef. Dry seasoning stirred in off the heat sits on the surface; 30 seconds in the fat and it blooms and goes right through the meat.
- Stir in the ketchup and the mustard and cook one more minute, until the filling looks glossy and clings to the beef rather than sliding around the pan. Take it off the heat.
- When the potatoes are done, let them sit five minutes, then cut a deep X in the top of each one. Squeeze the ends toward each other to push it open and fluff the inside with a fork.
- Press half the cheddar down into the hot potato flesh, right against it, so it melts into a creamy base. Pile the beef on top, then scatter the rest of the cheddar over that.
- Set the potatoes on a sheet pan and return them to the oven for 4 to 5 minutes, just until the top cheese is fully melted and bubbling at the edges.
- Scatter the chopped pickles, red onion and scallions over the top and zigzag the burger sauce across them. Salt at the table rather than in the pan, so everyone gets it the way they like it. Serve while the skins are still crisp.
The seasoning has to hit hot fat
This is the one step that decides whether these taste like a cheeseburger or like beef on a potato. Drain the pan down to about a tablespoon of fat, then sprinkle the seasoning straight into it and stir for a full 30 seconds before anything wet goes in. Garlic, onion and paprika are all fat-soluble, which is a dull way of saying they need grease and heat to let go of their flavour. The same half-tablespoon stirred in at the end of cooking tastes dusty.
The cheese goes in twice, and both layers do a different job
The first handful gets pressed down into the hot potato flesh where it melts into something closer to a sauce, which is what keeps the middle from being dry. The second handful goes on top of the beef, where it browns and pulls. Put it all on top and you get a lid of cheese over a plain potato. Shred it off the block, too: bagged shreds are dusted with starch to stop them clumping, and that starch is exactly what makes melted cheese turn grainy.
The pickles and the sauce are not garnish
A potato with beef and cheddar on it is a lot of richness in one bowl, and by the third forkful it all tastes the same unless something sharp is cutting through it. That is what the pickle chips and the brine in the sauce are for. It is the same job the pickle does on a real burger. Leave them off and you will notice.
What is actually in season right now
North Carolina sweet potatoes are at the peak of their harvest this month, and they are wonderful here: bake two russets and two sweet potatoes on the same rack and let people choose. Give the sweet potatoes about 45 to 50 minutes rather than a full hour, because they cook faster and they will slump if you forget them. Yellow onions and garlic came out of the fall harvest and will keep in a dark cupboard all winter. Fall broccoli is coming in across the Carolinas, and collards sweeten after the first cool nights — a bowl of either, or a plain shredded cabbage slaw with a little of the burger sauce thinned with vinegar, is the side that makes this supper. The russets themselves are a storage crop, so we are not going to pretend they came out of the ground last week. The cheddar, the mayonnaise and the pickles are refrigerator staples and we will not pretend otherwise either.
Feeding a crowd, and the potato bar
This is one of the easiest things in the world to put in front of eight or ten people, because the potatoes do not care how long they wait. Bake them, keep them in a low oven, double the beef (brown it in two batches so it browns instead of steaming), and set the cheddar, pickles, red onion, scallions and the sauce out in little bowls so everyone builds their own. Children will eat this. So will your brother-in-law who says he does not like vegetables.
Ahead of time, and the day after
The beef filling keeps three days in the refrigerator and reheats in a skillet with a splash of water. The sauce keeps a week and gets better after a day. Baked potatoes are the one part that does not keep well, so bake those fresh. If you have filling left over and no potatoes, it is very good folded into eggs in the morning, which is not a sentence we expected to write either.
Make it yours
Four strips of bacon cooked first, the beef browned in the fat and the bacon crumbled back in at the end, is the version people ask for twice. Ground turkey works with an extra teaspoon of seasoning and a tablespoon of butter in the pan so the seasoning still has fat to bloom in. A spoonful of pickled jalapeño brine in the sauce does more for heat than crushed red pepper does. And a handful of chopped collards wilted into the beef at the end is the easiest way to get a vegetable into it.
One seasoning doing all of it
HAAAAAM-Burger is our USDA Certified Organic hamburger and french fry blend — no MSG, no fillers, small batch, made by our family. The seasoning itself is gluten free and kosher; check your own ketchup, mayonnaise and pickles if that matters at your table. It comes in the 5 oz resealable pouch, which stores flat and is easy to pinch from with one hand while the pan is going.
More to put beside it
Crispy Oven Fries with Burger Sauce uses the same sauce and the same blend, One-Pot Cheeseburger Mac is the same flavour in a single pan on a busier night, and Loaded Baked Potato Soup is where a baked potato goes when it gets cold outside. If it is the crisp skin you are after, Crispy Smashed Potatoes and the Skillet Patty Melt are both worth a look.