Smoking Hot Valentine's

I already told how we celebrated the day before Valentine's Day. But even if weren't doing anything extra romantic on the actual date of Valentine's itself, we still had to eat something. So we decided to go with burgers, except we were bringing back last week's smoker.

Smoking hamburgers is not nearly as time intensive as smoking pulled pork. Which means the smoking was done over two hours, mid-afternoon, and most importantly I was able to document. Just in case you wanted a little more instruction on how to make a home made smoker.

To start with, we formed the patties, made a rub, and rubbed down the burgers.

The comes the actual set-up of the smoker. You start of putting the propane powered burner in the smoker.
The propane tank had originally come with its own stand. But after 14 hours smoking pig last week it started to get a little melty. While the two hours for the burger wouldn't have been to bad, we figured it would be safer not to use it. Instead we found a few rocks to keep it all balanced.

On top of the burner goes a plate of wood.
Last week we kept the plate uncovered. Except a good amount of fat dripped onto the wood, which reduced some of the smoke. So this time we covered most of the wood (hickory if you must know) to prevent that from happening.

Then the meat goes on top.
You can already see the smoke starting here! Cover it all up, and after two hours at around 250 degrees, you have smoked hamburgers.
Which were officially perfected by the Vanilla Coke.

It definitely made an interesting tasting hamburger to say the least, and I'd love to make burgers this way again. Although the boy says next time using mesquite chips might make a little more sense. We used the hickory chips since they were leftover from last weekend. And while I did enjoy the taste, I'm not quite ready to give up making burgers the normal way just yet. But it did make for an unexpected Valentine's Day meal for the two of us.

Anyone else celebrate Valentine's Day, somewhat different from the norm most would expect?

~Shoshanah