By Jeanna
As I said in the beginning of the week, I have never eaten, let alone cooked a turkey burger. I have heard how good they are and how they are the healthier version of a beef hamburger. My fiancé and I will be getting married in less than five months, so we are really trying to cook healthier food in preparation to look great on our wedding day. (Starting a cooking blog probably wasn’t the greatest idea when I’m trying to eat less food, but a girl has got to eat right!?). I found a very simple recipe from All Recipes. The recipe was submitted by Trudi Davidoff.
My first step was buying all the ingredients. This meal didn’t call for a lot of ingredients, so it was a pretty easy shopping trip. These were the ingredients from the recipe:
I already had the eggs, garlic (left over from the pasta dish last week), salt and pepper. My grocery store only sold one type of ground turkey (Jenni-O 85% lean/15% fat), so that’s what I went with. There were a few options for seasoned bread crumbs, but I chose Old London seasoned bread crumbs. My grocery store did not sell fresh parsley so I bought McCormick Parsley grinder.
The recipe called for 3 pounds of ground turkey but since it was just me and my fiancé, I only bought two packages of turkey which was about 1 pound each (2 lbs total). I didn’t change any other measurements in the recipe.
The first thing I did was chop up the onion. I cut it the same way I cut the onion for the pasta last week. I cut the onion down the middle, cut of the ends, peeled the onion, cut the onion vertically, and then turned it to cut it horizontally to give me small pieces. I didn’t cut the onion into as small of pieces for this meal. To make 1/4 cup of onion, it only takes 1/4 of the onion. Once the onion is halved, you don’t need to cut up one of the halves.
I then minced up the garlic. You peel it from its outer covering and finely chop it into tiny pieces. I then had to grind enough parsley for 1/4 cup. This took some time because it wasn’t like chopping fresh parsley up and 1/4 cup of parsley is quite a bit. This was also a messy task.
The next thing I did was get my egg whites. I used a small bowl and cracked one egg just enough to open it. I have learned the best way to get the egg white detached from the egg yolk is to pass the egg back and forth in the shell over the bowl until yolk only remains. I did this to both eggs. I then lightly beat up the egg whites with a fork for 20 seconds.
Once all those ingredients were ready to go, I got out a big mixing bowl and put my ground turkey, parsley, onion, garlic, bread crumbs, egg whites, salt and pepper in the bowl.
Once all the ingredients were in the bowl, I hand mixed the ingredients together ( I made sure to thoroughly wash my hands before AND after mixing the ingredients. Germs and food do not mix (there is a little pun for you) 🙂
Once the ingredients were all mixed together, I rolled them into balls the size of my palm to make 8 patties. (The original recipe asked for 3 pounds which would have made 12 patties).
I lightly coated my skillet with vegetable oil and turned the heat on medium while I was making my patties.
I could fit four patties on my skillet at a time. I let them cook for five minutes and then flipped them and cooked the other side for five minutes. Be careful to make sure your burgers are fully cooked. They are more delicate than beef burgers, so it’s easy for the outside to burn and the inside to not be cooked. These burgers are better to cook at lower temps for longer time. I cut mine open to make sure there wasn’t any kind of pink inside. If you have a meat thermometer, the internal temp should be 180º F (85º C).
Once they are done, you can put your favorite condiments on them and place them on a bun. They are ready to enjoy! Bon Appetit!
For more delicious recipes visit Cooking With Jeanna