Double Smoked Sliders

These are the best sliders I’ve ever made: Double Smoked Sliders, that is. The best finger food sandwiches I’ve ever made. There are no complicated ingredients here. Just one extra step when ordering the ingredients. Get the cold cuts sliced thick so they can handle a little smoke before drying out. Which is why I went salami and pork bologna (not the all-beef stuff) as two of the ingredients. Both of these have extra fat content than say a roast beef which makes this work. Some of you are wrinkling your nose at bologna, but smoked bologna rocks. So does grilled bologna. All of this was done on my pellet grill, but it could be done in a charcoal grill, gas grill, or kamado grill. 

Scroll down near the bottom and check out the video we made of this cook that I posted to our YouTube channel and please subscribe.

Double Smoked Sliders Ingredients:

• 5 slices of thick sliced salami
• 5 slices of thick sliced bologna
• 4 large slices of ham
• 11 slices of sandwich sized pepperoni
• Hawaiian slider buns
• Sliced cheese (pictured is havarti and colby jack, but we found some pepper jack after we took the ingredient pics and used that for some extra spice but use what you like)
• Banana peppers
• Sliced pickles
• Brown Mustard (substitute mayo or aioli)
• Compound butter

Keep in mind, you can do whatever toppings you like. These were just what we picked. The banana peppers, pepperoni, salami and spicy mustard were countered wonderfully with the savory cheese, butter, and the sweetness of the Hawaiian buns and pickles. This combo of flavors really meshed well together. I could’ve easily gone with mayo or an aioli as well. The biggest things here are the Hawaiian buns, thick sliced cold cuts, and compound butter.

How to Cook Double Smoked Sliders

Let’s start off by prepping the grill.

I used my pellet cooker and loaded it up with pellets:

Smoke Some Cold Cuts

Crank up the cooker to 225F so we can get more smoke into these slices before drying them out.

Then layer the thick cut salami and bologna on the cooker:

Wait to put the ham and pepperoni on because those should not be as thick. While the salami and bologna are smoking, you can make up the compound butter.

What is Slider Meat?

Traditionally, a slider is a small hamburger or cheese burger. Basically a tiny burger on a very small bun or dinner roll. But sliders are now any sandwich on those small buns. In this case we went with traditional sandwich cold cuts, but we smoked them to really kick this recipe up a notch. 

Make Compound Butter

This can be whatever you want.

We went with garlic and onion with a little parsley that we mixed up days or weeks before and rolled up in a sheet of wax paper which can be frozen for months:

A glass bowl and a microwave and my compound butter is ready:

More on the butter in a minute. Time to prep the buns. 

The slider bun trick

Remove the Hawaiian buns from the packaging but do not separate any from the bunch.

Grab a long serrated knife and slice the tops off of the entire lot of buns:

Spread that mustard (or mayo or aioli) onto the bottoms of the buns:

After about 10 minutes, check the salami and bologna:

The thick cut cold cuts are sweating nicely and taking in some smoke.

Time to add the ham and the pepperoni (because they are cut thinner).

Here are the ham slices on the grill (the 11 slices of pepperoni were added immediately after this shot was taken:

After 10-15 more minutes, all the cold cuts are no longer cold.

They are warm, smoky and sweaty!

Here’s what the thicker slices look like close up:

And if you are wondering about the odd number of 11 slices of pepperoni, particularly if you counted in the above pictures, you will see 12 slices on the grill.

Well, uh:

We had an escapee. It’s OK. You only really need about 9 slices. Leaving one for the pitmaster to do a little QC check on the remaining couple of slices.

Now let’s assemble our sliders:

I laid down the ham, then a layer of cheese, followed by salami and bologna, more cheese and the pepperoni:

Next up, layer down some banana peppers and pickles:

Top with the Hawaiian bun tops and set the whole thing in a disposable aluminum pan and brush on the melted compound butter:

Feel free to lay it on thick, and make sure to get the sides of the bun tops as well:

The butter keeps the bun tops from burning while we infuse more smoke and adds some amazing flavor. 

Time to put the ‘Double’ in Double Smoked Sliders

We are ready to go back on the grill:

Mmmmmm Smoke:

All we are going for is melting the cheese, infusing more smoke and melting the butter into the buns.

Once the butter is completely infused, you don’t have much time before the buns burn so keep checking the grill to know when to pull the double smoked sliders:

Now grab that serrated knife again and sliced into individual sliders:

In that above pic, you can see the cheese that leaked out of the sliders into the pan and stuck a little which means our cheese had melted.

Time to chow

Now set the sliced sliders onto a cutting board or platter to serve and let your guests grab a handful:

You might want to double or triple up this recipe if there are more than a couple people eating these, because I could easily eat half a pan of these!

Check out that deliciousness:

This pic begs the question:

How thick should a slider be?

How many could you eat?

Leave your answer in the comments below:

Double Smoked Sliders Recap:

This flavor combo of sweet, savory, spicy and smoky (I didn’t plan that alliteration). It is beyond delicious. For me, I wouldn’t change a thing if I made this again and I’m known for constantly tweaking stuff like this. It was the best slider I’ve ever had.  Double smoked slider, that is. 

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below or shoot me an email. 

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Recipe Card:

Print Recipe

Double Smoked Sliders

Cold cuts smoked on my pellet smoker then added to a slider buns with cheese and smoked again to melt said cheese to make double smoked sliders

Prep Time20 minutes mins

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Course: Entree, Finger Food, Main Course, Sandwich

Cuisine: Finger Food, Sandwich, Sliders

Keyword: Banana Peppers, Cold Cuts, Double Smoked, Finger Food, Pellet Cooker, Pellet Grill, Pellet Smoker, Pepperoni, Sando, Sandwich, Sandwiches, Sliders, Smoked Sliders

Ingredients

• 5 slices salami thick sliced
• 5 slices bologna thick sliced
• 4 slices ham thick sliced
• 11 slices pepperoni sandwich sized and thicker if you can get it
• 1 package Hawaiian buns
• 6 slices colby jack
• 6 slices havarti
• 3 oz banana peppers
• 3 oz pickles sweet
• 2 tbsp brown mustard
• 6 oz compound butter

Instructions

• Fill the pellet cooker with pellets and warm the unit up to 225F

  

• Place the thick sliced salami and bologna on the smoker

  

• While cold cuts are smoking, melt the compound butter
• Remove the Hawaiian buns from packaging and slice lengthwise to remove all the tops from all the bottoms without separating any of the buns

  

• Apply the mustard to the bottoms of the Hawaiian buns

  

• After 10 minutes, add the ham and pepperoni slices to the grill

  

• After another 15 minutes, remove the smoked meat from the grill and begin assembling the double smoked sliders

  

• Layer down the meat, cheese, banana peppers and cheese

  

• Place the sliders in the aluminum pan and cap off with the Hawaiian bun tops

  

• Slather the top of the buns with the melted compound butter

  

• Place the aluminum pan/sliders into the smoker until the butter is absorbed into the buns

  

• Remove from the grill and slice into individual sliders

  

• Serve

  

Video

More pics of the process:

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

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This article was initially published on: March 9, 2022