Coffee rubbed spice burger .

This burger had the special honor of having my mom come and visit. While she is not quite as adventurous as I am in eating she played along and ate the burger anyway. But as I told her, my blog would be pretty boring if every week was a plain cheeseburger. For this burger I created a spice rub which was similar to one I saw Bobby Flay use on a steak. The rub consisted of Mexican chili powder, sweet smoked paprika, garlic salt, yellow mustard seed, coriander, salt, black pepper, red chili flakes, and the main ingredient coffee grinds. The yellow mustard seed and the coriander I grinded myself and the rest was in powder form. Then I dumped all of the spices into a bowl on top of the ground beef and hand mixed until all the seasonings were soaked up by the beef. Then I hand formed into three even spice rubbed patties. The next step was to grate the cheese. For this burger I decided to use an aged Gouda cheese. For those of you who have never had Gouda it is probably my favorite cheese. I would recommend a 3 year aged Gouda. It is similar to cheddar but has a fuller and deeper flavor. It is also kind of a nutty cheese where a little goes a long way. I heated the cast iron skillet with a little vegetable oil and turned the heat up to high. Then when the skillet was hot enough I placed the burger on it to get a nice sear and really crust up those spices on the outside of the burger. Then after about 4 minutes I added some water onto the skillet to create the steam and covered it with a lid. Another 3 minutes and I flipped the burger over and covered with the grated Gouda. Then I added some more water and recovered just until the cheese was melted on top. For the bun this week I chose a Portuguese roll. The last step in the burger was a slathering of Mesa Grill barbecue sauce on top. The variety of pepper in this burger was evident from the first bite. Between the Mexican chili powder, the smoked paprika, and the black pepper the burger had plenty of flavor and a great crust. For those of you who have never used coffee as a rub before it really doesn't overpower the other flavorings. In fact the coffee just added a little richer flavor to the burger. If you didn't know it was coffee rubbed you probably wouldn't be able to pick it out by taste. I wouldn't say this burger was spicy but more so it was heavily seasoned. The spices make the different textures in the burger. The beef remains moist on the inside while the spices form a nice crunchy crust. The BBQ sauce from Mesa Grill is a nice touch as well because it has a little kick to it with great flavor and obviously moisture. The burger was solid. I wouldn't put this is my top five but it was definitely good. I recommend clicking on the picture of the burger to zoom in and really see the spice crust. I am down to only four weeks left.