Bobby Flay's Dallas Burger Recipe

Spring is finally here! After what seemed like a never-ending winter, we had our first weekend of beautiful, warm weather. It was a crazy week at work for both my husband and I, so we decided to enjoy the weather and relax with some baseball and delicious burgers. It was just what we needed!

Our absolute favorite burgers are those at Bobby Flay's restaurant - Bobby's Burger Palace. Both my husband and I have burgers there that we love, but the nearest restaurant is about 3 hours away. We decided to try our hand at the recipes we found on FoodNetwork.com for these burgers. Not only did we make each of our favorite burgers, but we also made Bobby Flay's Southwestern fries we devoured at another one of his top notch restaurants - Mesa Grill in NYC.

All this week, I'll be sharing the three recipes we made, including:

• Dallas burger - spice encrusted and topped with BBQ sauce and coleslaw
• Santa Fe burger - covered in peppered queso and blue corn tortilla chips
• Southwestern fries - double fried and seasoned with ancho chili pepper and Kosher salt

I'm starting off today with the delicious Dallas burger (my personal favorite)! I was so excited to try this recipe, but there was just one problem - the amount of ingredients required!

My husband and I are trying to experiment and incorporate more fresh ingredients and spices in our cooking. We are slowly building our spice collection, and try to increase the supply with spices we plan on using again and again. But, this burger recipe had a ton of ingredients we didn't have. There were ingredients for the BBQ sauce, spice rub, AND the coleslaw... The cost of this meal was quickly adding up. 

I started looking around the grocery and found two products that helped us achieve the flavor profile, but for a fraction of the price. Now obviously there's a reason that he includes this many ingredients, his food is amazing! But, for a quick burger at home, I found some shortcuts to get a similar flavor.

Instead of making my own BBQ sauce (which I definitely want to do sometime), I used Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Chipotle sauce. It's not a perfect match, but contains almost all of the ingredients in Bobby Flay's Dallas sauce including honey, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, molasses, vinegar, chipotle pepper, sugar, and onion! For the spice crust, I found Mexene chili powder that includes the main ingredients of Bobby Flay's spice crust including salt, chili pepper, cumin, and oregano!

With these cheat ingredients, and some deli coleslaw, the burger was simple to make. I mean, it's not quite Bobby Flay level, but it's a good substitute until we can get back to his restaurant (or he opens one near us!).

Dallas Burger ingredients:

• 1 lb ground beef
• Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Chipotle Barbecue Sauce
• Mexene Chili Powder
• Cole slaw
• Kosher salt
• Ground pepper
• Canola oil

Dallas Burger instructions:

• Preheat a skillet with oil to medium-high heat
• Shape ground beef into 3/4 in thick patties with a small indentation in the center (this keeps the burger from doming up)
• Season both sides of the beef with Kosher salt, ground pepper, and Mexene Chili Powder (only one is seasoned in the pic, because the other is for the Santa Fe burger)

• Place burger into preheated skillet and cook for approximately 4 minutes
• Flip burger and cook for an additional 4 minutes
• Check temperature of burger using a meat thermometer to get the burgers the way you want (we cooked longer to get to well done)
• For the best burger, lightly toast the buns in a separate pan with a little butter
• Cover burger with some BBQ sauce and top with coleslaw 

If you love BBQ, and a little spicy kick, then you are going to want to try this burger! If queso is more your thing, check back in a couple days for the Sante Fe burger (my husband's favorite). Then later I will share the DELICIOUS, spicy ancho chile fries. I'm hungry all over again!