A few years ago, I was watching an episode of "Thowdown" with Bobby Flay on the Food Network, and the episode centered around a little hole in the wall place in New Mexico that was famous for their green chile cheeseburgers. As the show unfolded, the owner of the little hole in the wall described the basic ingredients (fire roasted chiles and caramelized onions) in his famous burgers, but not the cooking process, and it became pretty obvious this would be an easy thing to duplicate. I tried it myself shortly thereafter with the help and advice of The Missus, and it became an instant favorite. So much so, that we probably eat these burgers about 70% of the time, they're so tasty. The combination of smoky fire roasted chiles, camelized onions, and cheese is a truly savory culinary experience.

So let's get started. There were 3 of us dining that night, so I took out two Anaheim, and one poblano chile:

I then put them on the grill to fireroast them using my weedburner - here's a cool animated gif showing the process:

When the chiles were fully blackened, I put them in a paper bag to "sweat". This helps to soften the skin for easy removal.

While the chiles were sweating in the bag, we chopped 1.5 white onion(yes, that's a LOT of onion, but we're going to caramelize them so they will really cook down):

And into a cast iron skillet with a few tablespoons olive oil under very low heat:

When the onions went in the pan they were given a generous dusting of sea salt and a bit of black pepper. Now this is where this process takes a bit of time: The onions will take about 40 or so minutes to caramelize, and they must be turned every 3 or 4 minutes. This is what they looked like about 20 minutes in:

At this point, I pulled the chiles out of the bag, and while rinsing under cold water, pulled the charred skins off, then opened them up to rinse the seeds out. Here they are afterwards:

Finally, into the skillet with the onions for about another 10 minutes. The chiles didn't take long to caramelize because they were already cooked:

While the chiles and onions continued to cook, I fired up my Kingsford Oval with mesquite lump:

And on went three large beef patties made from freshly ground chuck - since they were big, I started them indirect:

After a few minutes, I moved them to the hot side of the grill, then added the cheese - I like to use Muenster cheese on these burgers because the cheese has a neutral flavor and won't compete with the onions and chiles:

Once the burgers were cooked, it was time for burger assembly. I used potato burger buns because they are not only tasty, they are super soft. The buns were lightly toasted in the oven: