Turkey Burger

One of my guilty pleasures is reading a weekly tabloid magazine and I often rip out recipes that the magazine features.  This time, I found a turkey burger recipe by chef Reed Alexander and I just so happened to have a pound of ground turkey waiting to be cooked.  I was also quite interested to try this recipe because it calls for the use of a food-processor, which I do not have.  I do, however, have a really big (and very intimidating) new blender that can apparently chop and blend anything, so I decided to give it a go!

Here's the recipe:

1 portobello mushroom cap, stem and gills removed, chopped
3 T. chopped parsley
2 T. chopped carrot
1 T. chopped onion
1 lb. lean ground turkey
2 egg whites
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. pepper
canola oil spray
4 buns (recipe makes four burgers)

(The picture in the magazine also showed the burger with tomato and avacado on it, plus I put some mayo on mine, and it also said that cheese would be tasty on the burger---maybe Swiss or American.)

- Pulse the first four ingredients in food processor for one minute or until well-combined.
- In a bowl, mix the turkey, egg whites, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and vegetable mixture.  Divide into four patties and refrigerate for 15 minutes.
- Preheat grill to medium heat.  Spray with canola oil.  Grill patties 4-5 minutes.  Rotate quarter turn and grill an additional 4-5 minutes.  Flip burgers and grill 5-7 minutes more.  Place on buns and serve with desired toppings.

So....let's talk about this ground turkey, shall we?  I normally would buy the Jennie-O brand from my local grocery store, but I happened to buy a pound from Trader Joe's for the first time.  When I combined all the ingredients with the turkey in a bowl, the whole concoction was pure mush.  Like "won't even stay together in a patty" mush.  I definitely refrigerated it because I thought that would keep it together more (which I think helped a little bit) but I was worried that it was even too mushy to grill.  So, I told my husband that he had the night off from grilling and ended up cooking these on the stove in a big skillet.  I'm glad I did because they ended up firming up as they cooked at it all turned out okay.  I would try a different brand of turkey next time and see if that is better because I'm sure they taste really great when they are cooked on the grill.  That said, on the stove, they were delicious as well!  My 6-year old just recently decided that he likes regular hamburgers so I kind of tricked him by not tell him that he was about to eat a turkey burger.  He loved it!  It was a hit with everyone and the kids had no idea they were eating so many vegetables with their burger.  My husband said that he likes these even more than traditional burgers because they have SO much flavor.  I think this is definitely going to be a summertime favorite in our house! 

Here's a bad picture of my burger before I ate it.  (The avocado was perfectly ripe but the horrible camera-phone picture created a lot of shadows on it.  Boo.)

Enjoy!!