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You are going to love these Grilled Pork Loin Burgers! The pork and apple flavors go so well together – out of the ballpark good!
Featured with this Recipe
Grilled Pork Loin and Apple Burgers
These Grilled Pork Loin Burgers are delicious! My husband came up with this idea on his own and it is genius. I have to admit, he has some pretty awesome food ideas sometimes. He knows a lot about pairing flavors, and these flavors together were a serious home run!
Ingredients in Pork Loin Burgers
- pretzel buns or rolls
- cheddar or smoked gouda
- pork loin sliced
- chipotle sauce – click for our recipe
- honey mustard sauce – click for our recipe
Pork Loin Marinade:
- lemon juice
- brown sugar
- dijon mustard
- soy sauce
- vegetable oil
- minced garlic
- kosher salt and pepper to taste
For the Apples:
- apples – we used honey crisp apples
- butter
- honey
- cinnamon
Ingredient Substitutions and Additions
- For the marinade try adding some extra spices or fresh herbs like oregano, thyme, onion powder, garlic powder, or paprika
- Instead of apples try fresh or dried cranberries, blueberries, or prunes
- For topping you could also add lettuce, tomato, cabbage, arugula
The Secret’s in the Sauce
The pork loin is marinated in a sweet dijon sauce and grilled, the apples are grilled and basted in honey and cinnamon, and the pretzel buns are lightly toasted in the oven with a slice of cheddar. We had some friends over and we tried a couple different sauces with these. We couldn’t decide on a favorite so I am including both so you can decide which you like best!
The first is our tangy (and a little spicy) chipotle sauce, and the second is our sweet and yummy honey mustard sauce. Both were really good, you can’t go wrong!
Make it a Meal or an Appetizer
We served these for dinner with a side of fries. These were really tasty with our sweet potato fries, but if sweet potato isn’t your thing you could also try them with our potato wedges or loaded potato wedges!
You can make these as a regular size burger with burger pretzel buns or make them as sliders with pretzel rolls. The sliders would make an awesome game day appetizer!
Questions About Pork Loin Burgers
No, pork loin is very lean making it not a great choice for grinding.
If you don’t mind a little spice, go with the chipotle sauce.
This recipe would also taste great using a pork chop or ground pork. If using ground pork I like adding some grated apple and a little bit of bread crumbs to the ground pork mixture. Then shape into patties and cook over medium heat to medium-high heat in a skillet.
Read Next: Quick and Easy Dinner Ideas
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We love sandwiches – especially sandwiches with unique ingredients that give a boost of flavor. Here are some more of our favorites:
How to Make Grilled Pork Loin Burgers
Grilled Pork Loin Burgers
Equipment
- Outdoor Barbecue Grill
Ingredients
- 6 pretzel buns or rolls
- 6 slices cheddar or smoked gouda
- 1 1/2 pounds pork loin sliced
- chipotle sauce to taste
- honey mustard sauce to taste
Pork Loin Marinade:
- 1/3 cup lemon juice
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoon dijon mustard
- 2 tablespoon soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon minced garlic
- kosher salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Mix up the ingredients for the pork loin marinade at least 3 hours before cooking, the longer the better! Place the pork loin in a large plastic bag and pour the marinade over the top. Seal the bag and make sure the pork has the marinade evenly distributed all over it. Refrigerate.
- Let the pork sit at room temperature for 20 minutes before grilling.
- Turn your grill onto high heat. Remove the pork loin from the bag and place on the grill, discard the excess marinade.
- Cook for 7 minutes on the first side with the grill lid down, then flip and grill 6 more minutes with the lid down. Do not open the grill, but turn the grill off and let the pork sit for 5 more minutes before removing. Slice the pork loin to desired thickness.
- Core out the center of the apples, then cut into “doughnut like” slices. Brush with butter then grill on low for 5 minutes on each side. Remove from grill. Warm the honey and stir in a little cinnamon, then brush all over the apples.
- Open the pretzel buns (or cut the rolls) and place on a cookie sheet with the centers facing up. Place a slice of cheese on the bottom slice. Cook under the broiler in the oven just until the cheese starts to melt.
- Remove from oven and top the bottom slice with the pork and apples. Spread your favorite sauce on the top half of the bun and sandwich them together.
Notes
Recipe Tips:
- If you can, start the pork marinating in the fridge the night before. The longer it has to marinate the more flavorful the meat will be.
- Be sure to give the meat time to sit out of the fridge before grilling. This will help the meat cook more evenly and avoid an uncooked center.
- Pick a tart crisp apple for the best flavor. We typically use a honey crisp or pink lady.
- Don’t skip on broiling the buns and melting the cheese, this also softens the buns up making the burger taste even better.
Question
Are you using loin of pork or tenderloin?
For this recipe we used an actual pork loin but tenderloin would be great too! You can’t go wrong with either one. 🙂
Excellent burger! I marinated chops instead of a loin and grilled them on an indoor grill for about 2 minutes per side. The apple slices are delicious. I basted them with the juices that had accumulated from grilling the chops instead of melted butter. I added caramelized onions, a sprinkle of rosemary, and slathered the bun with red pepper jelly.
Fantastic!
This was fantastic! But I will say, that my grill cooks entirely too hot on high – came out of the house to find my grill at nearly 600 degrees after the 2nd turn. Had to cut the charcoal off the meat – but even with that everyone raved.
Oh no! I hate it when that happens! That happened to me once and I found the siding on my house melting…not good. I’m happy it still turned out ok. 🙂
Hi girls, great teamwork! Fabulous hamburger:)
I didn’t make them as a burger. Just sliced the tenderloin and served it on top of the apples. It was so good!!! I’d drink the butter, honey cinnamon syrup. A keeper for sure!!
What size pork loin is this for? And it fully cooks even tho not on grill very long?
It cooks fully every time for us, keeping the lid down is key so that it can cook internally, like an oven.