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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Honey Beer Chicken

Adapted from Cooking Light.

Delicious!  And freezable!  I'm starting to make and freeze meal kits in preparation for the arrival of Kiddo #3 and this one is on the list.  I made a kit of this recipe for my husband to make for dinner one night that I worked late...he said it was easy to make, easy to follow and tasted great.  So it's even husband-proof ;)

My grocery store had 4 lb. bags of frozen chicken breasts on sale, so I'm making two kits of this recipe along with 4 kits of gumbo.  If you wanted not to have extra of anything hanging around (like 4 oz. of beer out of a 12 oz. bottle), plan to make 3 honey beer chicken kits.  Fortunately, I have a willing volunteer to take care of the extra for me today (the aforementioned test cook/Dear Husband).

Btw, I completely spaced out and didn't take a *single* photograph of this dish, any of the 3 opportunities I've had.  Go see the Cooking Light site for a beautifully food-styled picture.

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San Francisco Pork Chops

Original recipe here.

These are just so good!  The finished reduction is a mite salty thanks to the soy sauce, so I strongly recommend using low-sodium soy sauce and maybe even going halfsies on the soy with some no-salt broth.

These are completely prep-ahead and freezer-friendly.  Just mix up all the sauce ingredients in a container to fridge or freeze, make sure you've got pork chops available and have cornstarch in your pantry. 

The sauce reduces as the pork chops cook on the stovetop, giving a thick, glossy, flavorful glaze that is just out of sight.


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Garlic Soy Pork Chops

This is such an easy-peasy marinade that makes blah pork chops sing.  It's no sweat to put together at the last minute, but it's also great as a freeze-ahead meal.  I like thin-sliced chops as they take no time at all to cook, but use thick-cut, bone-in...whatever floats your boat (and budget).  Just change the cooking time to accommodate.

This is a South Beach recipe that I have modified slightly to reduce the sodium content (which SBD is a leetle cavalier about IMHO) and to account for the fact that there is no harm in marinating these guys overnight or longer in the freezer.

Also, for those keeping track...carb count: 1g

No pictures again (sorry!) due to long and fun day at the State Fair (wherein I won a prize).

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Apple-soy glazed trout

This is a very easy meal to put together even if you don't do the prep-ahead/freezer thing.  But it does freeze ahead nicely, and that saves me the aggravation of discovering that I've run out of apple juice, struggling to open a new bottle of soy sauce while my children are tearing the living room to shreds, getting ingredients out, putting ingredients back, etc.  It's just one less thing to do at the craziest hour of the day...dinner hour.

Sorry I don't have a picture of this one being cooked, only a picture of the prepped freezer kit.  Like I said at the top of the week, it's been a busy week ergo the freezer meal bust-out and no daily picture-taking.  That's how life goes sometimes.
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