Tommy the Butcher from Wise Guys BBQ is back at it — this time with a CrackBurger Showdown that brings the heat (literally)! In this episode, we tackle the viral burger that’s taken over social media, putting it to the test three ways:
The Traditional CrackBurger
The Italian CrackBurger with zesty provolone and Italian dressing
The Blue Cheese CrackBurger — bold and unapologetically flavorful
Tommy not only builds each burger from scratch, but he also breaks down the why behind every ingredient and technique. From crafting a creamy, tangy homemade crack sauce to dialing in the perfect sear on a Yoder YS640 smoker at 550°F, this is a masterclass in burger engineering from a real butcher who knows his meat.
0:00 Intro
1:39 Meat Prep
6:59 Crack Sauce
8:23 Grill it
12:55 Build it
16:10 Taste Test!
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🍔 *TRADITIONAL CRACKBURGER PATTY RECIPE*
🥩 1 lb ground beef
🌿 3 tbsp Ranch salad dressing seasoning
🥄 3 tbsp sour cream
🥓 ½ cup cooked, chopped bacon
🧀 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
🍔 *ITALIAN-STYLE CRACK BURGER RECIPE*
🥩 1 lb ground beef
🌿 3 tbsp dry Italian dressing seasoning
🥄 3 tbsp mascarpone cheese
🥓 ½ cup cooked pancetta
🧀 1 cup grated provolone cheese
🍔 *BLUECHEESE CRACK BURGER RECIPE*
🥩 1 lb ground beef
🌿 3 tbsp Ranch salad dressing seasoning
🥄 3 tbsp sour cream
🥓 ½ cup cooked, chopped bacon
🧀 1 cup crumbled blue cheese
Each patty is hand-formed with the mix-ins, giving it a slightly meatloaf-style texture with tons of internal flavor.
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🥣 *HOMEMADE CRACK SAUCE*
Just mix and you’re done:
🥄 2 tbsp Mayonnaise
🟡 1 tsp Dijon mustard
🌶️ 2 tsp hot pepper relish
This 2-second sauce packs a punch and ties all three burgers together with that creamy, tangy finish.
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🔥 *COOKING METHOD & TOOLS*
🌡️ Temp: 500°F
🛠️ Setup: Heat deflector removed, griddle top installed for high-heat searing
🔥 Technique: Burgers are seared to build a crust, then finished with toppings
*Each burger is topped with:*
🍅 Tomato: A slice of tomato, seasoned with salt
🥬 Lettuce: Adds freshness and crunch
🍞 Brioche Bun: Toasted to absorb those pan juices
*Cheese varies by burger:*
Traditional: American cheese
Italian: Provolone
Blue Cheese: No extra cheese — the crumbles inside pack enough flavor
#cooking #viral #recipe #burger #burgerrecipe #crackburgers
Hey folks, Tommy the Butcher for Wise Guys BBQ here with another exciting video. Today, something special. We did CrackBurger 3 ways. It’s A three-way CrackBurger showdown. I hope you’re going to like the video as much as I like doing it for you. But before we get started, please like, share, and be sure to subscribe. Ring that notification bell so you will not miss an episode. I can’t wait to show you how to do this. So stick around. We’re going to be making it together. Hey, so what’s up with these crack burgers? That’s all I’ve seen on social media lately. They’ve gone viral. I’ve never had one. I couldn’t wait to try one. And I want to know, are these things actually all what they’re cracked up to be? Pun intended. So what we’re going to do for you today, we’re going to do a We’re going to show you how they’re put together, what the ingredients are. At the same time, we’re going to do a competition. We’re going to do a Crackburger throw down. And by that, we’re doing three different variations of a Crackburger. We’re doing the traditional Crackburger. And then we’re actually going to do an Italian Crackburger. And we’re going to do a blue cheese Crackburger, all following the same concept, using similar ingredients. in the building process, but we’re going to do this throw down. We’re going to try them out and we’re going to find out what these things are all about. So for our first CrackBurger, our traditional, I have 3 bowls here. They’re all 80-20 ground beef, one pound of ground beef. And we’re going to do similar process with each bowl. So on the first bowl, which is going to be our traditional CrackBurger, we’re going to put in three tablespoons of a ranch salad dressing or dip seasoning, and three tablespoons of sour cream. We’re going to go in with 1/2 a cup of cooked bacon. I cooked this bacon off, drained it, chopped it all up. Bacon’s going in. And finally, one cup of shredded cheddar cheese. I want to get this all mixed up. We’re going to get this all incorporated without getting half these ingredients all over the kitchen. Yeah, I’m highly looking forward to see how these come out. Quite interested in seeing what all this fuss is all about with the crack burger. We’re going to be bringing them out to our Yoda smoker. We’re going to be searing them off. We’re going to have the grill plate accessory so that we can do like a flat top cooking process on high heat. All right, here’s our traditional Crackburger mix. All right, so now I’m going to do our Italian Crackburger mix. Now, rather than ranch dressing, dressing mix, salad dressing mix dry. I’m using an Italian dry salad dressing mix. So that’ll be our spice going in to our Italian crack burger. Now rather than a sour cream, I’m actually going to go in with a mascarpone cheese. Mascarpone is like an Italian cream cheese. It’s got a slightly sweet flavor to it. It’s very rich. Not as loose as a sour cream, but when this is all blended up, we’re going to get that nice, smooth creaminess that we’re looking for. So in with the half a cup of mascarpone cheese, 3 tablespoons of mascarpone cheese, sorry. And rather than traditional bacon, half a cup of bacon, I’m going in with a half cup of pancetta, which is a cured, unsmoked Italian bacon. And rather than cheddar, I’m going in with a grated provolone cheese. So we’ve got to recap, we’ve got Italian salad dressing mix, pancetta, mascarpone cheese, and provolone cheese. So that’s going to be the base for our Italian crack burger. We’re going to see if this how this competes and goes up against the traditional crack burger. Our final competitor in the three-way Crackburger throwdown competition is going to be our blue cheese Crackburger. Now, I know it’s available. I know it’s out there. I look high and low everywhere for a blue cheese, a dried blue cheese salad dressing mix, and no luck, I couldn’t find it anywhere. That’s what I wanted to use, but we’re going to use the ranch seasoning in with the blue cheese. Crack Burger as well. So we’re going to do the three tablespoons of the ranch dressing. We’re going to follow along the same lines with the traditional Crack Burger with the three tablespoons of sour cream. And we’re also going to repeat the bacon that was in the traditional Crack Burger, half a cup of cooked bacon. Now the only different ingredient in this blue cheese Crack Burger is crumbled blue cheese. So for our cheese, we’re going in with one cup of blue cheese crumbles. Get all this incorporated. All right, that’s it for our blue cheeseburger. Now we just have to make some patties. I’m gonna probably make something like a 6 ounce patty. So there’s a traditional crack burger. Next we’re gonna do our Italian Crack Burger. And lastly, our blue cheese Crack Burger. All right, we’re going to get these outside. We’ve got our grill all fired up, ready to go. We’re going to get these on and get them all grilled up. See you in a minute. All right, so if we’re going to have Crack Burgers, you might as well have a crack sauce to go with it. So I’m going to put together something that’s very quick, very simple. I love mayo, and we’re going to turn this mayo into crack mayo with a few simple ingredients. And these ingredients, you can interchange them however you’d like. Once again, don’t be so fixated on a recipe. Follow it if you like what it looks like to you, but by all means, add items, substitute items, whatever you like. That’s where you should go. So I’m going to go in with about maybe 2 tablespoons of mayo. To that, I’m going to add maybe a teaspoon of a Dijon mustard. And my final ingredient is going to be a hot pepper relish. It has red peppers, green peppers. There’s some heat in this. There’s some sweet in it. So that’s my relish component to this. This is basically going to put together my own crack, a secret sauce. So I’m going to go about maybe a couple of teaspoons of that. I’m going to give this a stir. There you have it. In 2 seconds, crack sauce for our crack burgers. All right, we’re outside with our crack burgers. We want to get them all fired up. We got our Yoda YS640 smoker. cranking at 500 degrees. We’ve removed the heat deflector panel. So we’ve got that open flame underneath our grill pan. We’ve attached a cooktop grill plate. We’re going to get that seasoned off with a little bit of oil spray, Pam. All right, my blue cheese is in the back. My Italian is in the middle. And a traditional crack burger is in the front. We got one toothpick for the crack, two for the Italian, nothing on the cheese. I had to do something so I wouldn’t screw this up because I knew I would have did something stupid. So we’re going to shut the lid, let them go a little bit, get a little color, and then we’ll flip them. These things I can hear them sizzling. I think it’s time to give them a check and give them a flip. They’re looking great. Got some great color, a great crust developing on these. Wow. Now we’re using a griddle top accessory for this smoker. These work much better if you have like a flat top type of cooker or even a grill pan, any accessory that you can use. in any of your smokers or grills. But if you don’t have something like that, by all means, you can go right on the grill grates with this. You’ll get a lot of dripping and flare ups only because there’s so many ingredients in these patties. There’s cheese, there’s sour cream, there’s bacon. So just be aware that if you go on a grill grate on a smoker or a grill, you’re gonna get some flare ups on it. So I’m gonna let these go just a few minutes more and we’re gonna pull them. All right, let’s take a look at what we have here now. These have been going along. Wow. All right, so we’re going to go on with our cheese. And for our traditional crack burger, I’m using probably the best cheese you can use for a burger, and it’s processed American cheese. I mean, I don’t think I would have processed American cheese at any other time other than on a burger. It melts fabulously, and In my opinion, the best cheese to go with on a burger. On our Italian burger, we’re gonna go with provolone. And on our blue cheeseburger in the back, I’m not gonna go with any cheese on that. I’m gonna just go just as it is. Blue cheese has quite a punch to it. I don’t think we need to add another layer of cheese, but if it’s something you might like at home, by all means, Go with the cheese, but I think we’re fine just as is. So we’re gonna let this cheese melt. It’s only gonna take a second, then we’ll get them off. Yeah, we’ve been running these between 500, 550 degrees. You really need a hot surface, something around 550 degrees works well. You’ll get that nice crust, nice sear. So that temperature is important. So keep an eye on that. Just remember, you want to do these at a temperature in that range, something quite high. Here we go. We’re going to pull these off. They’re looking great. Whew. I don’t know if they’re Crackburgers, but they sure look like Crackburgers. We had a lot of crust built on these. All right, I got some nice brioche buns. We’re just going to plop them on there for a second. We’re not going to leave them on very long. Got to get a nice color on there and then get them off. That’s about it. Here we go. That’s all that took. Not only that, it like absorbed some of those juices that were in that pan. Those are going to be delicious. All right, I’m going to go inside and we’re going to get these all built and we’ll see you in a minute. All right, we’re moving on. Next step is to build our burgers. We’ve got our grilled brioche buns. First is our traditional crack burger. Stop, reverse. Before we get this on, we’re basically going on with the same condiments, the same toppings with all three burgers because we want to give them equal footing when we do our comparison. So nothing has anything different going on other than what’s inside the burger itself. So we’re going to go on to a little bit of our crack sauce that we made. We’re going to put a little bit on each bun. I’m using a little bit of lettuce because we want I want some freshness in this. And there’s so much going on in these burgers. That’ll, quite frankly, don’t think you need all these kinds of toppings and condiments loaded up on there. So lettuce, nice slice of fresh tomatoes, and tomatoes like nothing more than a little bit of salt, so make sure you season these up. Place our burger on top. All right, crack burger number one. Next is our Italian crack burger. Same process going on with our crack sauce. A little bit of lettuce. Nice slice of tomato. Season that tomato. And on with our Italian crack burger. All right, and here’s crack burger number two. out of three. So last but not least is our third Crackburger, and it’s our blue cheeseburger. And once again, I didn’t put any cheese on this. I felt it was best to leave it alone. That blue cheese has a lot of punch to it. I don’t think we needed to adorn it with any more cheese. But hey, if you want, if you wish, go right ahead. Knock yourself out. On goes our sauce. Once again, we’re going to go with the tomato. I mean the lettuce. I’m sorry, lettuce first. Slice a tomato. Season that tomato with salt. On with our blue cheese crack burger. All right, folks, there it is. We executed the, I would say the first crack burger showdown. Now these crack burgers have been going viral on social media lately and I couldn’t wait to try one and I want to see what they were all about. So not only we did a Crackburger for you, but we did two others. We did an Italian Crackburger, we did a blue cheese Crackburger. So I hope you liked the video. As much as I like doing it for you, please make sure you subscribe, like, and share and ring that notification bell so you do not miss an episode. There’s only one thing left to do now and that’s dive into one of these because I’m dying to see what these CrackBurgers are all about. So we’re going to go with the traditional CrackBurger first of all. And there’s a look at the traditional CrackBurger. I’m going to cut them all open for you before I taste them. So there’s a CrackBurger. And here’s our Italian CrackBurger. And last but not least, blue cheese crack burger. Wow, these look tremendous. A lot going on here. All right, I’ve got to go in with the traditional crack burger first. Wow, there’s a lot going on here. It’s very delicious, a lot of flavor in that burger. Are they a crack burger? I don’t know about that. They’re very good, but I don’t know if I would actually go as far as to call these crack burgers, but they’re absolutely delicious. But you need to try this. The burger has almost like a little bit of a meatloaf type of texture to it with all those ingredients mixed into it. But I had to try it out and see what it’s all about. So we’re going to do the Italian crack burger next. This is the one done with the Italian dressing, provolone cheese. Wow. All right, I’m 2 bites in. I already know what I’m pushing out. So far, the Italian Crack Burger reigns supreme. I’m liking this one much better with the flavors. Last but not least, I keep saying that with a blue cheeseburger, Let’s dive in and see what we have here. All right. I love blue cheese. Great blue cheese flavor. I think we did the right thing by not putting any cheese on top because that would have just kind of like more is less sometimes. So very good. I don’t know if I’d go as far as to call any of these crack because you have to reach quite a high level if you’re going to call anything crack as far as I’m concerned. My pick, the winner as far as I’m concerned, is right here, the middle, the Italian crack burger. I would do that one over any of these, but they’re all good nonetheless. So that’s it. I’m Tommy the Butcher for Wise Guys BBQ. Hope you liked the video. Please like, share, subscribe, and ring that notification bell. Thank you for watching and we’ll see you next time.