Hello my foodie friends! I apologize for starving you over the past couple of weeks. Sadly, the worst thing that could happen to a food writer has happened to this food writer: my oven went AWOL. Luckily, apartment management is not legally allowed to prevent me from feeding myself and I got a lovely replacement oven that will be bringing you my delicious attempted dishes from now on. As it’s electric and I’m still quite wary of the strange glowing red coils that make up its innards, I decided to play it safe and ease back in to my culinary experimentations with some stove-top cooking instead. I bring you: the turkey burger!
This may seem simple to most, but I am a strict recipe girl, not necessarily are fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of “chef.” The structure sooths me in the confusing cooking world, a world peppered with so many spices and simmer temps it makes my head spin. But recipes for turkey burgers don’t grow on trees.
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I learned that in the vast depths of the Internet, the most advice you are likely to come across is “shape patties to desired thickness” and “season to taste.” I’m not a math and science type of gal, but when it comes to making food I want an exact formula. Something like “garlic powderX2+1/3 package turkey meat” with some temperature information thrown in for good measure. Lacking this information, I had to blaze my own mathematical cuisine trail, and here are some tips I came up with:
Don’t go tall. What I mean by this is although the thick, beastly burgers on TV cooking shows look massive and delicious all at one, don’t pile your meat up until it becomes the leaning tower of Pisa. It takes forever to cook and while mine still turned out tasty, there was a good 2-inch ring of blank bun around the perimeter that wasn’t so conducive to burgery goodness. Aim for the diameter of your typicam Mickey D’s Big Mac and about two-to-three times the height. A good rule of thumb: if you buy the package of lean ground organic turkey at Trader Joe’s (which is slowly becoming my new Mecca), you can make about three good-sized burgers out of that.
Garlic salt should be the one hard and fast rule when it comes to making (as Samuel L. Jackson would say) a tasty burger. And be liberal! I made a few test burgers to get my seasonings right, and the one that I used garlic salt on very sparingly tasted like…well, like nothing. Plop all the messy ground stuff into a big bowl, pile on the garlic salt and don’t be afraid to get your hands in there! That’s my favorite part. Is it creepy that I enjoy the feeling of squishing dead flesh between my fingers in my pink mixing bowl?
While we’re talking meat, seriously, you have to spring for the fancy stuff. The lean turkey meat is, of course, good for you, but it also makes the grilling a lot easier. None of that fat dripping down means none of those dark scorch marks on your patty (unless, like me, you forgot about your first test burger and got to test out the smoke detectors in your brand-new apartment!). That way you don’t have to molest the juices out of the meat with constant flipping to avoid those icky marks. Of course, you must still flip when needed, but more sparingly!
And so, I was able to come up with a recipe of sorts, or at least a set of instructions to ease my fears and hopefully yours too. What shall I cook up next?
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