Since having two boys, my date nights out with Brian have dwindled down a little. We’ve always been content to spend an evening playing board games or watching a movie on TV –  with an occasional round of Rock Band thrown in – I’m sure Brian would say this doesn’t happen often enough.

One thing I do miss, just a little? Going out to eat. When we were first married, we went out to eat much more often, not thinking at all about how much money we were spending. A favorite place of ours to go was (and still is – we just don’t go there nearly as much!) Chili’s. We both have several meals we really like, so we didn’t get stuck in a rut ordering the same thing over and over again. Two of our favorite things at Chili’s are their skillet queso and their blue cheese bacon burger – yum!

I’m working on a book review for Stephanie (copykat.com) of her great new cookbook (I’ll be posting the review later this week, so keep an eye out for it), and came across one for Chili’s Skillet Queso – score! I immediately knew that was one of the recipes I wanted to try, and that inspired me to make my own version of the blue cheese bacon burger, too.

First I made the skillet queso, because after all, it’s an appetizer (and I needed sustenance for all my labor in the kitchen, right?). All I’ll say right now is that it was super easy – I’ll wait to tell you more about this one when I post my book review.

On to the burgers. I’ll fully admit that I have never been the best at cooking hamburgers. Normally Brian handles these out on our grill, but it was in the 30’s yesterday – weird Texas weather strikes again! – so I planned to cook these in our Le Creuset grill pan, which Brian got for a birthday gift (I felt like it was MY birthday too getting that).

First I sautéed some onions in a small skillet with a dash of olive oil, a sprinkling of kosher salt, and a pinch of sugar.

They started out like this:

And ended up like this:

At the same time, I cooked four strips of bacon until they were nice and crispy. We love bacon in our house, but we usually get turkey bacon to try and be a little healthier. I also mixed the ground beef with some Worcestershire sauce, kosher salt, and black pepper. I formed it into four patties, refrigerating two for later, and put the two for dinner on our grill pan.

After everything finished cooking, it was assembly time. We found some great onion bread that we decided to use for buns. Very different from what we’d get at Chili’s, but it was a nice difference from normal hamburger buns. And isn’t it pretty?

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