Whiskey Burger
This Whiskey Burger is not your ordinary burger. Juicy, thick hamburger patties infused with a touch of whiskey and topped with sauteed mushrooms, crispy bacon, and a rich and flavorful whiskey sauce!
If you’re in a mood for more extraordinary burger recipes, try my quesadilla burger and blue cheese burger.
Table of Contents
There is no such thing as summer grilling without burgers. It’s all about thick and juicy hamburgers sizzling on the grill, filling the backyard air with the most amazing aroma. If you’re not drooling just from that thought, you must be a vegetarian!
Yes, burgers and grilling go together hand and hand, but you don’t have to break out the grill to make them right in your own kitchen. You can use your stove to cook burgers even easier, either in the pan or on the stove-top griddle. (Just make sure it’s a proper griddle for your stove.)
So any day you feel like sinking your teeth into a juicy burger loaded with the most flavorful toppings, the recipe is here for you. You’ll never be more happy being messy as you are eating this whiskey burger topped with crispy bacon, sauteed mushrooms, and of course, amazing whiskey sauce!
Ingredient Notes and Tips
Ground Beef – Choose 80/20 good quality ground beef! This will give the burger a good amount of fat to make it tender and juicy. At the very least, I recommend going up to 85/15 ratio.
Egg – I started adding egg a couple of years ago and I did notice a difference in the texture. The egg really helps keep the meat from falling apart.
Salt and Black Pepper – These are simple seasonings, but when you add them inside and on the outside of the beef patty, they make the flavors sing.
Whiskey – yes, you really should use real whiskey and not any kind of cooking wine. It does not have to be an expensive whiskey and make sure not to choose any flavored ones.
Mushrooms – baby bella mushrooms are always and good choice and are widely available, but you can choose any mushrooms you’d like. You can even use leftover sauteed mushrooms if you have any, just chop them smaller.
Beef stock – try to choose bone beef stock if using store bought, and choose one that’s labeled either “low sodium” or “no salt added.” Of course, if you have any, homemade beef stock would be the best choice.
See recipe card for complete information on ingredients and quantities.
How To Make a Whiskey Burger
Burgers:
Combine the beef, Worcestershire sauce, whiskey, egg, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl (1). Mix it quickly and thoroughly.
Divide into 4 qual weight portions if you’re making 1/2-lb burgers or 6 equal portions if you’d rather make 1/3-lb burgers. Shape the patties as quickly as you can and lay them out on a metal tray covered with parchment paper.
Season each patty with some more salt and pepper on both sides and cover the tray with plastic wrap (2). Refrigerate for 2-4 hours prior to cooking.
When ready to cook, preheat either a cooking pan or a stove-top griddle and add some oil. Add the patties to the hot pan and cook for 5-8 minutes per side (4). The timing will depend on how well done you want them.
Pour in some whiskey after you flip the burgers and finish cooking them.
Let the cooked patties rest on a plate for about 5 minutes prior to serving. Keep them warm by loosely tenting with foil.
Mushrooms and Whiskey Sauce:
While burgers are chilling, you can make the mushrooms and the sauce.
Mushrooms: Preheat the cooking pan over medium to medium-low heat and add oil and butter. Let butter melt and add sliced mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and sauté until they get golden brown (3). Take out and set aside.
Whiskey Sauce: add a little more oil and butter to the same pan and sliced onions (4). Sauté until they start to get golden brown and sprinkle flour over them (5). Start to slowly pour in whiskey as you stir the onions (6). It will start to gently simmer and thicken (7).
Slowly pour in beef stock as you stir (8). Once combined, stir in Worcestershire sauce and tomato paste. Stir it in until all combined. Season with salt and pepper and add bay leaf. Let the sauce gently simmer over medium-low heat for a few minutes (9). Take off heat.
Tips for Grilling a Burger
- Make a little well: take the patties out of the refrigerator and use your fingers to make a well in each center, about half way deep. This truly does help to keep the centers from raising and bulging.
- Oil the meat not the grill: spray each patty with some cooking spay before placing it on the grill. Place them over direct heat.
- Don’t make your grill too hot. Let the grill preheat on medium-high.
- It’s always a good idea to prepare either a gas or charcoal grill by creating two temperature zone fire so you have a hot side and a cool side just in case. (If burgers are thick, you may need to move them over to the cool side to finish cooking so they don’t char.)
- Do not disturb: once on the grill, do not touch them again until ready to flip. Fight the urge to readjust or move them around.
- Do not press: for the love of everything that is good and pure, do not press the burgers. It breaks my heart to see people squeezing all those wonderful meat juices out.
- Let it rest: when done, take them off the grill and let them rest for a few minutes before eating. This will give a chance for all the juices that have compressed during the cooking process to spread out and give you a nice juicy bite every time.
Burger temperatures
To take the temperature: hold a hamburger patty with tongs and insert the thermometer probe through the side toward the very center. The reading should be of the center of the patty.
Burger Temperatures:
- For medium-rare burgers – 130°-135°
- For medium – 140°-145°
- For medium well – 150°-155°
- For well done – 160°-165°
Safe Temperature: The FDA recommends that hamburgers should be cooked to an internal temperature of 160°F. If you choose to cook them to a lower temperature, be sure you’re using the freshest and best quality beef or even making your own ground beef!
Recipe FAQs
While this whiskey burger has all the ideal toppings like onions (in the sauce), mushrooms, bacon, and whiskey sauce, you can try something else. For example, if you want to omit the mushrooms but love onions, try adding some caramelized onions as well.
If you’re feeling fancy, add a fried egg at the very top of the burger and serve it with the top bun on the side.
No, it is not recommended to cook the patties from frozen because the outside of your burgers will be done but the inside will be raw or still frozen. Make sure to thaw the frozen patties first and do it slowly in the refrigerator.
French Fries is, of course, the most popular side option for any burger. Try my truffle fries!
Potato salad
Macaroni salad
Grilled corn on the cob
Corn salad
Make Ahead Instructions
Absolutely! You can make all the parts of the burger ahead of time, except cooking the hamburger patties.
Whiskey sauce: you can make the whiskey sauce and store it in its own air-tight storage container, in the refrigerator, for 3-4 days. Make sure to cool the cooked sauce first. Reheat in the microwave for a few seconds or in a sauce pot over medium-low heat.
Bacon: you can also cook the bacon ahead of time and store it. Make sure to cool the bacon first and store it in its own air-tight container, in the refrigerator, for up to a week. It’s best to reheat the bacon in a pan on stove-top.
Mushrooms: cooked mushrooms also reheat well. Cool sauteed mushrooms to room temperature and store in its own food storage container, in the refrigerator for 3-4 days. It’s also best to reheat cooked mushrooms in a pan on stove-top.
Burgers: I do NOT recommend cooking the burgers ahead of time because they will be tough when reheated and most likely overcooked. You can prepare the hamburger patties and store them overnight or up to 12 hours in the refrigerator before cooking. Just make sure they are completely air-tight.
More Recipes To Try
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Whiskey Bacon Burger Revipe
Ingredients
Whiskey Sauce:
- Tbsp oil
- 1 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 small yellow onion
- 1 1/4 Tbsp all purpose flour
- 1 cup beef stock
- 1/2 cup whiskey
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 Tbsp tomato paste
- 1 bay leaf
- salt
- fresh ground black pepper
Burgers:
- 2 lbs ground beef 85/15 or 80/20
- 1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
- 1 egg
- 1 salt more or less to taste
- 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper more or less to taste
- 2 Tbsp whiskey to cook the burgers
Toppings:
- 4 hamburger buns
- 8 oz baby bella mushrooms sliced
- 8-12 strips crispy bacon
Instructions
- Burgers (2-4 hours ahead):
- Combine ground beef, Worcestershire sauce, egg, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl and mix. Mix it fast but mix it thoroughly.
- Shape the patties as quickly as you can and lay them out on a parchment paper covered metal tray.Note: Divide into 4 qual weight portions if you’re making 1/2-lb burgers or 6 equal portions if you’d rather make 1/3-lb burgers.
- Season each patty with some more salt and pepper on both sides and cover the tray with plastic wrap.
- Refrigerate for 2-4 hours before cooking. (If you need to, you can refrigerate overnight but make sure to cover the tray with plastic wrap air-tight.)
- Sauce:
- Preheat the cooking pan over medium to medium-low heat and add oil and butter. Let butter melt and add sliced onions. Sauté onions until they start to get golden brown.
- Sprinkle flour over the onions and stir to coat them evenly.
- Start to slowly pour in whiskey as you stir the onions. It will start to gently simmer and thicken.
- Slowly pour in beef stock as you stir. Once combined, stir in Worcestershire sauce and tomato paste. Stir it in until all combined.
- Season with salt and pepper and add bay leaf. Let the sauce gently simmer over medium-low heat for a few minutes. Take off heat.
Sauteed Mushrooms:
- Preheat the cooking pan over medium to medium-low heat and add oil and butter. Let butter melt and add sliced mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper and sauté until they get golden brown. Take out and set aside.
Cooking the burgers:
- Use your fingers to make a well in the center of each patty, about half way deep, before taking off the plastic wrap.
- Preheat a cooking pan over medium and add some oil. The pan should be hot when adding the burgers.
- Add burger patties and cook for 5-8 minutes per side, depending on how well you want them*. Do not disturb the burgers while cooking. Pour in whiskey about half way through the cook, after you flip the patties.(Note that these are 1/2 lb. patties, they will take a couple minutes longer than thin burgers to cook.)
- Take cooked patties out of the pan as soon as they are done, and let them rest on the plate for about 5 minutes before servings. Tent them loosely with a sheet of aluminum foil to keep warm.
Assemble:
- Top the burger off with sauteed mushrooms and onions, bacon and whiskey sauce.
Notes
- *Burger Temperature:
For medium-rare burgers – 130°-135°
For medium – 140°-145°
For medium well – 150°-155°
For well done – 160°-165° - Cooking burgers: These patties are 8 oz. so smaller and thinner burgers will have a slightly different temperature. But it’s important to note that burgers cook very fast, so even 1 minute will make a difference. Lucky for you, this recipe produces delicious and juicy burgers even if you cook them to medium well.
- Do not disturb: when cooking, do not touch the burgers again until ready to flip. Fight the urge to readjust or move them around.
- Do not press: for the love of everything that is good and pure, do not press the burgers. It breaks my heart to see people squeezing all those wonderful meat juices out.
- Let it rest: when done, take them off the grill and let them rest for a few minutes before eating. This will give a chance for all the juices that have compressed during the cooking process to spread out and give you a nice juicy bite every time.
Nutrition
Originally, this recipe was posted on Will Cook For Smiles in June 2013.
All images and text ©Lyubov Brooke for ©Will Cook For Smiles. Please do not use my images without prior permission. If using my posts in collections and features, please link back to this post for the recipe.
Disclaimer: Nutrition information shown is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate as most ingredients and brands have variations.
We make burgers a lot in the summer so I am always looking for new recipes. Well I have to say that I am so glad that I found this one!!! It was absolutely fabulous!!!! You rendered my husband speechless. He literally grunted and moaned the entire meal. I’m going to use this sauce on a steak next!! Thank you so much!!
Thank you so much for this comment! It makes me so happy to hear that people love my recipes. I’m so glad you liked it!
Made these for supper tonight, they were the best burger I’ve ever had! All through dinner my husband and I raved about how fantastic they were, we couldn’t believe how fantastic the sauce was, and how well everything went together. Then about 5 minutes after we had finnished we both went running to the bathroom, and have been in and out of there fir the last hour! It was terrible, we don’t usually cook with alchohol and I’m wondering if maybe we are just to sensitive for it, either way the burgers were still fantastic.
Hi Monica!
When you cook with alcohol, especially simmering it, just about all the alcohol cooks out (about 95-100%). This is also a very small amount of alcohol to have effected you to the point of getting sick. It also depends on what kind of sick. If you got nauseous, it would me more likely the meat. (We have gotten unfortunate with sausage and beef like that a couple of times. ) If you got sick the other way, I would say that it was lunch because food takes several hours to work through your system and make you sick. I hope this helps and I hope you feel better soon!
Depends on a person’s system I have eaten fruit and a few minutes later I was in the bathroom. It all depends on the person’s metabolism and how they digest food.
Made these for my husband today for Valentine’s. Grabbed some fresh, high end beef (5% fat, all natural) and bacon (natural, thick cut applewood smoked) from the meat department and picked up a new bottle of local whiskey. Added the sauce to the mushrooms and onions, into the meat, and into the bacon. Served with fresh green beans with sesame seeds and some Red Robin fries (sold in stores.). He loved it! I hate whiskey and loved it. Keeper recipe. Thanks!
Sounds like a perfect Valentine’s Day dinner at home, Helen! Thank you! I’m so glad you liked it.
This reminds me of my favorite burger at a restaurant nearby!! Never thought to make it at home before…thanks for posting!
Congrats, your recipe is being featured on Foodie Friday, I will be pinning and tweeting it this week too. Stop by and get your featured button. Thanks again for sharing with us.
Thank you so much, Diane!
This sounds and looks delicious!!! Please come share it at Two Girls and a Party linky party!!http://www.lifewiththecrustcutoff.com/two-girls-and-a-party-linky-party-20/
Oh, this looks sooo good! My husband will love this! I can’t wait to try it:)
The ultimate manly man burger.