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Warning: This burger will cause involuntary orgasms which are great, but it could also cause involuntary heart attacks, which are not so great.

Ingredients:

1x Slice of Pepper Jack Cheese
1x Slice of American Cheese (Just regular pasteurized yellow cheese for you non Americans)
1tsp or so Cream Cheese (just enough to smeer across the bottom bun)
1tsp or so Mayonaise
2x Slices of Bacon (Style up to you)
1x Burger bun of your choice
1/3lb of Extra Lean Hamburger Meat (97/3 at least)

Start off by taking your 1/3lb of hamburger meat and flattening it out into the shape of a hamburger patty. I always recommend making it a bit larger (side to side wise) than is required for the bun because it'll plump up and shrink as it cooks.

My preferred method is pan cooking for lean hamburger simply because their isn't enough fat to really leak out of it on the ole' George Foreman and what little there is, we want to keep in the burger. The leaner your meat is the less liquid you really want draining out of it. You'll end up with a flat tasting burger that's too dry. My other major reason? I like my hamburger medium rare and I know that as soon as the pink strip around the edge of my burger disappears that means the center of my hamburger is a decent light pink and is still perfectly juicy. Mileage may vary.

What's that you say? I should cook my hamburger thoroughly to prevent the 1 in 800,000 chance I might get bacteria that isn't killed during cooking inside my body and then I might suffer the 1 in 1,000,000,000 chance that my body can't fight it off?

I'll take my chances. You can too if you like yummier food

Moving on!

Get that pan up to medium heat. You don't want to cook the burger too slow due to obvious time constraints but if you have the heat too high you'll burn the outside of the burger before the interior has time to warm up. Medium heat all the way, no need to complicate things by going from hot to low to medium or anything fancy. Just keep an eye on it, and remember to keep your spatula handy because lean burgers don't leak a whole lot of fat to keep them from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Even non sticks can fall victim to the dreaded burnt pan burger bottom.

Right before popping the burger into the pan I lightly toss on some black pepper. A great option is to mince up a small clove of garlic (when I say mince I mean mince 'till it's liquid nearly!) and mix it in with the burger for those of you that like a little snap to your meats, but that's completely optional. You don't want it to over take the other flavors like garlic has a tendency to do.

Also a little tip to pan cooking a burger, when you've got just a few minutes left on the timer throw a top on the pan. This finishes off the burger with a nice steaming and in this cooks opinion, leads to a juicer burger. Not a greasier burger, but a cleaner tasting juicier burger. Lean meat doesn't have a lot of fat, and therefore not nearly as much grease. As I said earlier though, it's easier to dry out lean meat, so by popping that top on there for a few minutes to finish it off, I get to keep some of that liquid in.

So now you have the perfect hamburger patty. For those of you that refuse to let your burgers stop at anything but done or well done, just wait a couple more minutes before pulling it out of the pan. When the burger feels firm to the press of the spatula and doesn't shoot liquid out of it's crevices, it's done.

Before I go on, the choice of lean burger meat is not for health reasons. It's simply because fat = grease and in my opinion all that grease just doesn't add a whole lot of flavor. A lot of people like that, but I just can't stand it. I like the taste of the meat itself, and by using lean beef I have a much more simple platform to build other flavors on top of, without having to worry about making a mess when I bite into it.

Same pan, same heat level, throw the bacon in! Now I use reduced sodium bacon, again not really for the health reasons (it's bacon after all) but because I think the flavor mixes better with other flavors. It's important, but you can choose to use whatever you like, and if you try turkey bacon then let me know how that goes.

Pan cooking bacon is an artform. There is simply no other way to put it. I can't tell you how many grease burns I have sustained over the years from bacon but I quickly learned that the best tool at my disposal is a 5 dollar mesh cover with a handle. The best 5 dollars I've ever spent. If it's a fine enough mesh you greatly reduce the mess you make and keep from causing you to look like a burn victim the next day. DO NOT USE A TOP! You want the water in the bacon to escape and it escapes in the form of steam. I personally believe that this leads to crispier bacon, the science behind that I'm not so sure about but it's just how I do it. So get a mesh cover with a handle!

While the bacon is going (if it's out of your reach it's too far away, rule #1 of the kitchen, objects in hot grease should never be out of arms reach) go a head and slice open one of those buns. On the bottom slice, take that cream cheese and spread a thin layer across the bottom of the bun. This isn't just about flavor, but it also creates a barrier between the burger and the bun. This will allow your bun to stay soggy free longer. Since these burgers aren't nearly as greasy it's not nearly as big of a deal, but it helps for sure. That.. and it's tasty.

Lay the burger on top of the cream cheese. Lay the slice of pepper jack on top of that, and then finally the American and bacon that should be finishing up. Last but not least, a very very thin layer of mayo on the top bun brings it all together.

Now sitting before you is the greatest burger on the planet. I kid you not, the pop of the pepper jack to the creamy yet subtle cream cheese, the light crisp crunch of the bacon and the juicy yet not at all greasy burger come together to form something that I, just tonight in fact, simply call perfect eats.

Make this for your hubby or hunny and believe me, you'll get laid.