Irish Cheeseburgers with Whiskey Onions

I found this recipe for Irish Burgers and Whiskey-Caramelized Onions posted over on our friends' and local food bloggers' site Burp! Where Food Happens blog, and I knew immediately we had to make it sooner than later. I knew Nate would be in with the mere mention of "burger," and not to mention "Irish" and "whiskey."

So we decided to go ahead and make them for dinner Saturday night, which was a nice enough nice that we could bust out the grill for the first time in 2011.

We followed the recipe exactly (much to Nate's dismay, I put the kibosh on adding whiskey to the beef, saying we needed to follow the recipe closely for the first time). Everything was incredibly easy and amazingly delicious. I'm still thinking about those burgers a day later--I'm also relishing in the fact that we're having the other two burgers for Monday night's dinner.

Some plugs for where to purchase some of the items:

• I stopped at the Spice House in Wauwatosa to pick up dried juniper berries. When I asked them how to best grind the berries, because I don't have a spice grinder (yet ...), they offered to grind them for me. How nice! I love this place.
• My mom and I were running errands Saturday afternoon, so we took a trip to the West Allis Cheese and Sausage Shoppe. I've never been to their location in West Allis (only the stand at the Milwaukee Public Market). what a great place! Plenty of fantastic cheese, meats, beer and local products. I found Dubliner cheese there.

The burgers were fantastic, and as I said to Nate a few times, I would be happy just eating forkfuls of the delicious caramelized onions on their own! When--not if--we make these again, I would do two things differently:

1. I would make the sourdough rye focaccia Paul and Lori made with their burgers. We pulled some plain hamburger buns out of the freezer to have with ours, and they weren't that tasty anymore.

2. I can't believe I'm saying this (I'm not usually a fan of having any sort of rare or medium beef), but I would ask Nate to grill the burgers for a little less, so they're still a bit pink in the middle. I think these might have been cooked just a wee bit too long.

With the burgers, we made asparagus and one of our favorites, sweet potato fries (we seasoned them a bit differently this time--we sprinkled them with chipotle power and smokey paprika. Delicious!).