I finally bought some ground turkey after being dissatisfied with all the burgers that I had made with this meat. I took a nice long break and came back to this with some new ideas. I love turkey, but it can be dry and bland if it is not prepared well. My first step is to brine any turkey or pork loin roast because of how dry they can be. But, how do you brine ground turkey? I know, “very carefully” or “not at all”.
I kept thinking that I wanted to add moistened bread and eggs, but that can also make everything very dry too. So I poked around in my refrigerator and decided to use veggies and herbs to change these burgers. Here is what I did:
2 lbs ground turkey
1 sweet, yellow pepper
1 medium yellow onion
8 cloves of garlic
1 “healthy” teaspoon of dried, ground rosemary
The juice of 1 lemon, plus the zest
1 tsp salt
1 tsp coarse grind black pepper
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
Olive oil
1. Cut the yellow pepper (discard core, seeds and stem) and onion into chunks. Place them into the bowl of a food processor and add the garlic, rosemary, lemon, salt, pepper and red pepper flakes. Process until smooth.
2. In a medium size skillet, add 2 tbsp of olive oil and heat on medium. Add the puréed veggies and sauté for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Let cool.
3. Place ground turkey into a large bowl and add the cooled vegetable purée. Mix well and shape into burgers. I used enough of the mixture to fill one hand for each burger.
4. In a large non-stick skillet, place 4 tbsp of olive oil and heat on medium. Arange the burgers in the pan and cook with he cover tilted to let the steam out, cook until browned, approximately 7-8 minutes. Turn the burgers over to brown on the other side, approx. 6-7 minutes. Check to make sure that the internal temperature has reached at least 165’ F.
These came out moist, very flavorful and had a great texture.
From the heart of my purple kitchen to you, enjoy!!!
S.
