In my quest to lose some pounds, I have been moonlighting with turkey. (with Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepard, obvi.) I've made some turkey meatball thing (the sight of white meat balls skivvies me out though) and have kind of been threatening to rock some turkey nachos. But before I get to that point, I decided that turkey burgers were the way to go.
You can't really mess up a burger. Or rather, I've never met a burger I didn't like. But then again, like Joey Tribioni, sandwiches, in any form, are my favorite food. Yeah, I said it.
So I was watching Rachel Ray (don't ask) and she was making open faced turkey burgers with some kind of gravy topping with peas and carrots and stuff on top of an english muffin. Blorf, right? But what she did say that stuck was that turkey dries out quicker than beef and that to maintain moisture inside the patty, it's crucial to incorporate herbs. Herbs are different than spices in that herbs retain their essential oils in their leaves and can be used fresh or dried. Whereas spices essenial oils are located in their pods, seeds, bark, etc and must be dried. In addition, you or I could grow herbs in any pot of soil we found, but spices are almost all cultivated in a land far, far away. (Thank you Alton Brown!)
So here is the recipe that I used/altered/ made my own:
2lbs ground turkey
3 green onions, cut to make lots of little circles (I'm sure there's an exact term. I just don't care enough to look)
6 or so branches of dill, chopped (disclaimer:my boyfriend and I love dill more than anything, so you may want to use sparingly)
Cumin
Turmeric
garlic salt
normal people salt (not rock, or pink or seasoned. Think like the salt of the 80's)
The reason that I didn't put measurements down for the powdery stuff is because I kinda just went with the flow. A friend once said that "cooking is an art, baking is a science." So I probably take more liberties with flavors than I should. Anywho, combine all the ingredients in a bowl and work it with your hands until the meat is uniform in shape. It wont be in color. But think like you're in need to put it all into a sausage. Or don't, whateves. Who am I to judge if you like your patties lumpy?
Ok, now here's the ancient Chinese secret: take a SMALL little nugget of your concoction, make a patty fit for a mouse, and fry that sucker up! Once it's all cooked through, taste it and see what it is missing. I did this about twice, and added more Cumin and more dill, respectively. This really is such a no brainer, I don't know why I didn't think of it before!
Once I was satisfied with the taste, I made a ball of the whole turkey/herb thing and then made a cross through the whole thing. Now I know I have the ability to make 4 equal patties.
I shaped them all up and then tossed them in a pan over medium heat. No oil. They ended up taking about 8 minutes per side. But that doesn't mean I didn't flip them more than once. I am all about rare beef burgers, but turkey is a dirty bird (see what I did there?) and like chicken, you need to cook them all the way through. I waited until the outside had a kind of hard caramelization. Then I cut them in half because I was so neurotic about whether or not they were done, but that's a story for a different time.
Once those little suckers were done, my boyfriend and I dug in. The bread we used was the almond rosemary focaccia. It could have been as though God himself made us dinner because it was SO effing amazing! Legend.......dairy! My BF said that it was so tasty that he didn't even want to put condiments on it. But he did insist on cheese. It's always something.
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