Small Town Summer: Petite Turkey Burgers

There is something about Summer that makes you want to grill all of your food. And when our childhood friends decided to stop by for dinner and a look at the new house, I felt the same way.

Despite the record heat wave.

We wanted to make something that would compliment the small, no perservative-rolls my mother brought home from Our Daily Bread who often caters at her office. When this happens, we get to have their delicious rolls for dinner.

The answer is one of my favorites: Greek Turkey Burgers.

Photos by Marisa Hunt                                                                                            

This is one of my favorite recipes passed down to me by my Dad who made them with beef, and as always I made a few slight changes.

Just to be clear I have no problem with meat like beef or pork, I just don't eat them because they hurt my stomach. I often make steaks, pork chops, and other red meat for my friends and family while I sit back and eat poultry or seafood. (Look for Grilled Steak and Shrimp with Corn this weekend!)

I wasn't always a "semi-vegetarian" or the less used and more pretenious Pollo-pescatarian, but around the age of ten I started to get frequent stomach problems and the only things that seemed to help was to cut out the red meat. This wasn't easy, as should be I was a carnivore as a kid and I have probably only eaten 3 hamburgers, 3 hot dogs, and 1 pork chop out of politeness since.

Still, even if you do eat red meat, turkey burgers are a great homemade bite. Turkey is so much lower in fat and cholesterol and tastes good too. Plus, you can experiment more with ground turkey because you would dare ruin a real burger with cheese and herbs.

The prep is very easy for these, I just hope that you have a master griller like me...

Daddy's Greek Turkey Burgers

Ingredients:

1 1/12 lbs. of lean ground turkey meat (93/7)

1 or 1/2 of a medium onion chopped finely

2-3 cloves of garlic minced

1/4 cup chopped basil

1/4 cup of crumbled feta cheese

1 egg

Olive oil

Splash of half-n-half or cream (this makes up for the lean meat)

1/2 pack of brown or onion gravy

A very small squirt of Sriracha (Hot Chili Sauce) Absolutely the best!

Lots of cracked pepper

A teaspoon of salt

Directions:

Start with your ground turkey in a large bowl.

Add your onions, minced garlic, and one egg. Mix well.

Add feta cheese, basil, gravy mix, Sriracha, salt, pepper, olive oil, and splash of cream. Mix well.

Make small-medium size patties. With 1 1/2 lb. of meat you should be able to make 10-12 burgers.

Place evenly on grill at 425 degrees and cook for 4 minutes and 30 seconds on each side.

Make sure you cook them throughly but not too long to make them dry.
The only problem with ground turkey is that poultry CANNOT be raw of medium well.

Bring them inside and load them up to eat!

The good thing about this burgers is that they are so flavorful you really do not need to put much on them.

But of course Aaron melted Colby Jack on his. That boy loves cheese.

As the burger connoisseur nobody grills better!

For my burger I just put a little olive oil mayo with pepper and some of those delicious cucumbers seen about and tomatoes. As always, all the produce is from our green-thumbed neighbor. God bless that man!

I paired mine with a salad and dug in! Voila! Makes great leftovers too!

They were happy to dig in as well!

After taking over 50 pictures of this meal, I hope you like the ones I chose!

P.s. If you are thinking, "those are some tiny burgers!" I assure you we all ate 2 or 3 or them.


Enjoy!

Love,

The College Cuisiner