Honey Pear and Blue Cheese Burger

This weekend it was my wife Ann's birthday so I had to make my burger on Friday because we were going away for the weekend. Happy birthday Annie. For her birthday dinner we went to a Tapas restaurant in Baltimore which gave me lots of inspiration for new burger ideas. Anyway, I decided to go with an ingredient that was in season right now and that is pears. Pears are in right now so they are plentiful and very fresh. I chose a Bosc pear. The Bosc pear is brown in color but very sweet and juicy. If you read any gourmet magazine or talk to a cheese enthusiast they will tell you that pear and blue cheese are a great combo. You will often see them paired together in a salad but I figured why not in a burger. So, first I halved the pears skin on and drizzled honey over the flesh side of the pears. I then placed them flesh side down on my grilling stone after it had been preheated to 500 degrees. Then I closed the lid and just let them roast in the grill for about 15 minutes. When finished the honey from the pears carmalized and created a coating that was almost a dark brown syrup on the fleshy side of the pear. I then thinly sliced off that dark pear flesh to put onto my burger. Then I started on my burger which was a beef burger from Omaha steaks. I cooked the burgers for 7 minutes before flipping them and covering with a few slices of Gorgonzola blue cheese which I sauced with Frank's Red Hot Wing sauce. One of the reasons that pear and blue cheese go together so well is because of the salty and sweet. So for me when I think of blue cheese I also think of Buffalo wings. This Frank's Red Hot if you have never had it is really good. It has a little kick but it is also tangy. I like to use it on a lot of things as a sauce to add some flavor. When the blue cheese melted it had a reddish coloring melted in that was just that extra kick that I was looking for. The last piece of the burger was the bun. For this burger I choose a whole wheat oat bun which I lightly drizzled honey onto the outside. The bun itself was outstanding and the honey just made it even more incredible. This burger was just a hit. It was salty, sweet, tangy, and when I used some more of the Hot Sauce for dipping it just made this a perfectly balanced burger. This was a definite success. 10 Burgers down and 20 to go.