Thursday, September 22, 2011

Healthy Changes, Day 7: Turkey Burgers

Day 7 Overview:
Weight:   210.5 lbs (-6.5 total)
Exercise: 3.5 mile walk in an hour.
Recipe:   Turkey burgers with sauteed onions & mushrooms (great- try it!)

I had a terrible case of insomnia last night and didn't fall asleep until 3:30, after lying there for over 3 hours.  Ugh.  As a result, I was rather cross-eyed when I woke up at 6:30 to work out and promptly went back to sleep for a couple more hours.   I awoke to banging and shouting that had to do with the stairs-removal.  A couple of hours in, it is still quite noisy, so I've had no problem using the blender, turning up the stereo and running the vacuum this morning. They keep making the most horrible noises and all I see in my head is the Black Knight skit from Monty Python:

I had a berry smoothie for breakfast and the last of the squash noodles with rice for lunch.  I definitely recommend them as a third day meal since they were much more mellow and I didn't mind having them at all (now that the olives are gone), especially with the side of rice.  I was planning on another shake for dinner, but realized Henry would be home and we could come up with something for both of us to eat instead. 

So he brought home a pound of ground turkey and I set to making four burgers out of it.  We would normally add shredded cheese to it, too, but didn't this time since dairy isn't on my list of allowed foods.  However, for some reason I can have goat cheese, so I plan to pick some of that up when I'm at the farmers market.  As you can see, I added some of the leftover sauteed squash as an additional side.  Henry didn't add another side since he was able to have his burger on a bun with all his favorite accouterments and I just had mustard on mine - thank goodness for the mushrooms and onions!


There is no official recipe, but what we do for turkey burgers (or beef, or bison) is mix up a bunch of seasoning and cheese with the meat before cooking.
Combine the following in a bowl
(or make up your own spices & seasonings).
1 lb of ground turkey
Worcestershire sauce
onion powder
garlic powder
all purpose seasoning
parsley (fresh or dried)
thyme (fresh or dried)
oregano (fresh or dried)
a dash of sea salt & dried mustard
freshly ground black pepper
We will often use a little Moore's Marinade (like Dale's Steak Sauce but without the high-fructose, etc.) since it has so many of these flavors, too, but used the Worcestershire this time instead.
Squish it all together with your hands and then divide it into four burgers and put in a container in the fridge until time to cook.  You want to take them out of the fridge for at least 15 minutes before you cook them so that they can be closer to room temperature when you put them in the pan.  Henry is the burger chef, but I think he just puts a few tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and then adds the burgers once the pan is hot.  I don't know his rules for timing things, but it seems like 4 minutes per side and then see how they are looking (especially depending upon the varied thickness of potential burgers).

For one of the sides, we did a variation on Lisa Crescitelli's famous beans.  No one knows for sure what she puts in her beans but this is what we put in ours this time.
Start with a can or two of whole green beans
Dump the whole can with sauce into the pot and add
Garlic (fresh, chopped, minced, powder - whatever you have)
Onion (red or yellow, chopped, minced or powder - whatever you have)
Worcestershire sauce
Black pepper, Tabasco, Cayenne pepper (whatever your heat tolerance level)
Again, this is an opportunity to open the spice cabinet and put in whatever you think will taste good with the beans.  I like to make a big batch of these because the flavors just get more intense the longer it sits in the juice in the fridge.  Heat on medium until it starts to boil & then turn it to low.  Great leftovers.

Sauteed Onions (& Mushrooms)
Chop up some onions (red or yellow)
Start with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a pan and turn to medium heat.
Once the pan is warm, add the chopped onions and stir frequently, cooking down until they are almost translucent.  You can add seasonings like black pepper, Tabasco, garlic powder, etc while they are cooking.
When they are getting a little dry in the pan, add pickle juice (or some of the green bean juice from the stove) instead of more oil. 
For the mushroom lovers, you'll want to add fresh chopped mushrooms at the same time as the onions (& you will need an extra tablespoon of olive oil for this) or canned mushrooms once the onions have started to break down a bit.
This is also great as a leftover and makes the extra turkey burgers into a wonderful lunch.
Enjoy!

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