Tea, Burgers and Cheese.. oh my!

I love burgers. All kinds of burgers. Big ones, little ones, stuffed ones, turkey ones: I love burgers. In my quest to try and eat healthier, I have been eating more turkey burgers than beef burgers. My only issue is the slight lack of flavor that ground turkey has. I have made it a personal and crazy goal of mine to try and come up with a good tasting burger. I have tried mixing ingredients together and making what I called my Greek burger. They came out good but I knew I could do better. I experimented with different kinds of ingredients to mix into the turkey but I was not satisfied yet. So after much thinking and much cooking show watching; I decided on a spice rub. If you can put a spice rub on ribs or steak why can't you put it on a burger. I became determined at that moment! After looking at different recipes for different rubs, I decided to make a spicy coffee one. While trying to make one that tastes good I have come to the conclusion that some spices do not taste good when eaten directly out of the container. Sorry, I digress, so spicy coffee rub it is.

I am a type of person who loves big, bold, in-your-face flavors. So there is no surprise that I chose the flavors I chose.

Of course with every burger there must be cheese so I now had to find a cheese to stand up to the spice rub and homemade BBQ sauce. I decided to use smokey gouda based on recommendations I had read in a magazine. My burger was nearly done. Being a bacon lover (as I mentioned before) I decided to add an apple wood smoked bacon to the mix and everything was complete! All the smoky and spicy flavors mixed and just went POW! To add a little extra crunch I added some arugula and the peppery flavor was perfect.

If all those flavors sound a lot, trust me its not. To me, it was the perfect compliment to a bland turkey burger. To wash it all down I made an iced tea lemonade cocktail. It was perfect meal and drink to end the day.

My burger experimention definitely is not over. Stuffed burgers here I come!