That famous Featherblade burger? Here’s how to make it at home

The bacon cheeseburgers at Featherblade in Dublin are a menu standout, with a juicy beef patty, melting mature Cheddar cheese, and that famously thick slab of caramelised smoked bacon, topped with bright-pink pickled onions.

The Dawson Street steak restaurant’s takeaway kit, available during the pandemic, earned a 9/10 score from Corinna Hardgrave, the Irish Times restaurant critic, who described the burgers as “stupendously good”, with “deep, savoury, meaty beefiness with a hint of smoke coming through”.

Featherblade head chef Aaron Fitzpatrick.

So what makes these burgers so special, and can they be replicated at home, without the kit? Aaron Fitzpatrick, head chef at Featherblade, shares some of the secrets of his creation. “In my opinion, to create the perfect burger, you need to use a combination of meat cuts.” The Featherblade patty has applewood-smoked brisket, aged striploin and a little chuck beef and suet.

“Most burgers will have an 80 lean meat to 20 fatty meat ratio. Using a little bit more fat than this really makes a big difference. Grass-fed beef is also much better to use in a burger, as it has so many more layers of flavour than corn fed beef. The grind of the mince is also very important. For the perfect burger I would always use a medium grind.”

The Featherblade bacon is smoked in-house. “We order raw pork belly and cure it for 10 days in our own special mix, then sugar coat it for two weeks and then smoke it for six hours over applewood. This results in a sensational sweet and smokey bacon, and when you fry it the sugars caramelise and give it a dark, crunchy outside,” Fitzpatrick says.

A strong mature Cheddar cheese is melted on to the burgers when they are almost cooked, and the whole lot is assembled on a brioche bun. “Brioche is my favourite to use, because it has butter and eggs in it, making it a rich and delicious bake. It also doesn’t get as soggy as some buns do.” Brioche burger buns are available from lots of supermarkets, including Aldi and M&S.

Burger architecture: layer things in the correct order to make a stable burger.

Fitzpatrick recommends constructing the burger with care – burger architecture, he calls it. “If I order a burger and it has a giant toothpick in the middle of it, I know it’s going to be a bit of work to eat, and it really shouldn’t be. I believe putting most of the toppings on the bottom is key. It makes the burger easier to eat, as it’s less messy and there’s less chance of it toppling over.”

Black garlic mayo and pickled onions complete the composition of the burger. Black garlic can be found in bulb and paste form in the Chan Chan range of condiments developed by chef Kwanghi Chan, and available to purchase online. Pink pickled onions are a cinch to make. Just slice red onion into thin half-moons and immerse them in red wine vinegar (into which you have dissolved a little caster sugar, if you don't like them too sharp), and they're ready to eat in a couple of hours.

That’s it, the Featherblade bacon cheeseburger, deconstructed. Just make sure to use good quality beef: it’ll make all the difference.

Here are a few more burgers, from the Irish Times recipe archive, to ring the changes, including Gráinne O’Keefe’s ultimate beef burger with onion rings and rarebit cheese sauce.