We’re big fans of dipping sauces, and this burger recipe uses a glaze that would also make a delicious dipping sauce for fries, chicken nuggets and tenders and anything else you like to submerge in a tasty topping. The sauce, along with the stellar burger seasoning mixture, also makes for a restaurant-quality sandwich all of your friends will want. And we know because after we tested the recipe and posted it to social media we received inquiries about its contents, solely based on pictures of the finished product. So, without further foodie blabber, here’s how you make it. We cooked indoors this time, but these would make fantastic grilled burgers for summer.

Ingredients

Burger

1 pound ground meat (we made 1/2-pound burgers for two of us, and you can modify for your serving size)

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 teaspoon mustard (recipe calls for ground dry mustard, we used regular store-brand condiment mustard out of the bottle and it tasted great)

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon salt (tread lightly to not over-season depending on how much meat you have)

1 teaspoon pepper (tread lightly to not over-season)  Glaze

2 tablespoons of mustard (recipe calls for ground dry again, and again we used mustard straight out of the condiment bottle)

1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

3 tablespoons of maple syrup (recipe calls for pure maple syrup, but to save money we used maple-flavored store-brand syrup and it tasted great)  Toppings

King’s Hawaiian sandwich buns (recipe calls for pretzel buns, but those are hard to find in our small town and rural county)

bacon

cheddar cheese

lettuce (if you want to get fancy, the recipe calls for baby arugula)

chopped onion

Step one: Mix your burger patty ingredients, incorporating the onion, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper into your meat.

Step two: Dash a light coating of oil in your pan, and place your burger patties in the pan.

Step three: Cook your bacon. We actually chose to bake the bacon in the oven for this recipe, and it turned out great. More grease also appeared to cook off of the bacon.

Step four: Mix your glaze ingredients and taste to ensure you like it before you baste your burgers.

Step five: Once you turn your burgers (the only time you’ll need to turn them if your meat is fresh and not frozen), baste the sweet-tangy glaze on top. Keep basting lightly as they cook until you remove from the pan.

Step six: Toast your burger buns to prepare for making your sandwiches. Sometimes we prefer to not toast a bun if the bread is particularly fresh and room-temperature because it actually has a better consistency and more flavor for the sandwich.

Step seven: When the patties are almost fully cooked, top with a slice of cheddar cheese and let it melt just enough before removing the burgers from the pan (or grill, if you’re cooking outdoors).

Step eight: Top your burgers with the onion, lettuce and bacon. Serve.

Molly’s Take: I loved these burgers, mostly for their amazing flavor created both by what you put IN the burger and what you put ON the burger. The maple-mustard glaze is so good, we’ve used it since to dip chicken fingers in. I love how it reminds me of honey mustard, too. I’ve not had better burgers in most restaurants, and it definitely was of equal quality with some of the burgers we’ve had in fancier burger-centric restaurants, like our local Newt’s Pub Burgers. All in all, this recipe makes a delicous, absolutely delectable burger with so many flavors to excite your tastebuds from the first bite to the last.

Matthew’s Take: I’m a barbecue sauce kind of guy most of the time if I’m going to top a burger with anything other than mayo. But this maple-mustard glaze is a major winner for me. It’s like a different kind of honey mustard and, when combined with the bacon, the soft King’s Hawaiian bun and the burger seasoned in this recipe, every flavor works to perfection, both individually and in concert together. It’s not an incredibly cheap recipe, because you need a decent number of ingredients to pull it off, but we were able to offset some of the more expensive items (the pure maple syrup and the dry mustard) without sacrificing the quality of the sandwich. It looks like something you would see in a restaurant, and it tastes like something you would eat in a restaurant. I give the Vermont Burger with Maple-Mustard Glaze an A+ for taste, an A+ for presentation and an A for price flexibility. If you use regular buns instead of King’s Hawaiian or the prescribed pretzel buns, you can save even more money at the grocery store.