Turkey Burgers

Turkey burgers baked in a jumbo muffin pan
as mini-meatloaves (same bat time, same
bat temp) with a brush of garlic jelly as a glaze

I just adore Chris Kimball, America's Test Kitchen and their recipes.  They are almost uniformly a few steps more intensive than I'm willing to do on a regular basis, but I forgive them because they are always so, so right.  That said, I am willing to live in the place between Right and Easy, a little place I like to call Rational Compromise ;)

The July 2012 issue of Cooks Illustrated includes an egg-free, carb-free recipe for a moist, light turkey burger.  The one major departure I make from this recipe is that I do not grind my own meat by purchasing a bone-in hunk o' turkey, cutting the meat off the bone, partially freezing it and running it through the food processor for just enough pulses to produce the "perfect" grind.  Huh-unh.  Not gonna do it.  I used 1 1/2 lbs. ground turkey instead and got delicious results.

There are some surprising ingredients here...soy sauce, baking soda, gelatin.  I can't remember all the science but there's a reason for it.  Go to your local public library and check out this issue of CI for details.  A super-cool bonus of the science is this makes a nice tender burger without the usual carb-y additions or eggs for those with egg allergies.

Regarding the mushrooms...the mushrooms get very finely chopped and effectively disappear into the burger.  It's not like eating big chunks o' mushroom with your burger, in case you have some fungi-phobes at your dinner table.  I will say that you do need white button mushrooms here instead of something fancier for aesthetic reasons.  I made this recipe with brown cremini mushrooms, and they just come out looking very unappetizing in the final product.  With brown mushrooms, the burger is still PERFECTLY DELICIOUS but UGLY AS ALL HECK.

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Tofu Burgers

This recipe was among my first tries at cooking with tofu.  I think the original recipe came from one of Molly Katzen's Moosewood cookbooks, but I'm not entirely sure now.  I did find the combination of flavors in the OR both a little weird (tahini, miso and basil???) and underwhelming, and have over time found my own happy flavor mix.  But the basic technique for creating a burger patty out of tofu remains the same.  A delicious twist on this flavor mixture is using a curry paste instead of tomato paste with mint for the fresh herbs. 

The one thing you can do "wrong" here is to make the mixture too wet by not pressing enough moisture out of the thawed tofu or by adding too much stock.  The result will be a mushy patty rather than a toothsome burger at the end of cooking.

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Spinach burgers with green bean casserole

I have new toys :D  I was gifted a new cookbook for Christmas that I've already marked about 2 dozen recipes in called Fresh from the Farmers Market.  It's a nice mix of single-ingredient and convenience-food recipes and many include directions for freeze-ahead and prep-ahead cooking.  Keep tuned for a possible giveaway of this book and more recipes from it ;) 

Tonight's dinner consists of two recipes from this book...spinach-ified burgers and Emmitt Smith's Green Beans.  I'm tweaking (as usual) to suit ingredients on hand and to create less work (most notably the grilled turkey burgers are baked pork burgers tonight).  Both are prep-ahead friendly; the burgers are freezer-friendly.  Together, the recipes come in under 500 calories per serving (yes, we are counting calories as a New Year's resolution...sigh). 

My husband declared these burgers his "favorite ever", and the green beans could totally sub in for a lower-calorie (but still very rich tasting) version of the usual holiday green bean casserole.

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Fish Burgers and Veggie Croquettes

The common theme with these two recipes is that if you make them ahead to freeze, they need to spend some time in the freezer firming up before you squash the daylights out of them with a vacusealer.  Vacusealing will keep them both much fresher-tasting, but they're prone to going completely out of round if they don't freeze pretty solid first.

The veggie croquette is one of my faves for its dual vegetarian main/side dish status, its repurposing of leftovers that usually won't get consumed and its general old-fashioned-ness.  In fact, the original recipe came from a WWII-era home economics textbook that belonged to my husband's grandmother.  Reading old cookbooks and trying out vintage recipes is as close as I get to liking history, but I must say that it is such an insightful history lesson to cook as women did in another time and place.  There's a moment of connection across generations when you realize that the face your husband made about Meatless Monday Rice Patties with Flourless Cheese Gravy is the same face somebody's husband made about the exact same dish in 1944.  But I digress...
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