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Watch Out, Ground Beef. There’s a New Burger in Town: Thai Basil Southwestern Turkey Burger
In my house, we’ve switched from burgers made with ground beef to burgers made with ground turkey. It wasn’t an easy switch because ground turkey is frequently dry and almost tasteless. We began experimenting with additions to make those burgers juicier and more flavorful. We think we’ve come up with a winner for burgers so delicious, you’ll never miss beef burgers again.
By the way, 
these burgers are not low cal. And the finished burgers are big, bigger than I like. However, I have not been successful at shaping very small sections of the burger mix. If you know how, please let me know (Comment!).
Ingredients
For the pesto:
1 cup pinion pine nuts (about 3 ounces)
About 4 ounces hard Parmesan cheese (pre shredded Parmesan will not taste the same, so use cheese that comes in a triangle).
1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
Big bunch of basil (about two cups). I like Thai basil because it has a bit more kick than common basil, but use what you have so long as it is fresh and bright green.
2/3 cup olive oil or substitute flax seed oil for Omega-3 fatty acids.
For the Burger patties:
1 lb ground turkey
1 medium sweet onion
1 clove fresh garlic (no, that doesn’t mean the whole bulb, just one of the cloves that make up the bulb)
1 large stalk celery
Few drops Tabasco sauce
Procedure
Make the Thai Basil Pesto
Shred or finely dice Parmesan cheese.
Finely dice basil. I use the basil stems as well as leaves, but you may prefer to use only the leaves.
Add cheese, three or more drops of Tabasco to taste (be careful, especially if you don’t like spicy foods. Tabasco is authoritative!), and basil to blender with lemon juice, pine nuts, and half of the olive oil.
Pulse the blender, adding more olive oil as necessary, until all ingredients are well-blended into a fine, green pesto paste. For this application, you do not want a runny pesto, so go easy on the olive oil until you see how much is needed.
Adjust seasonings, adding salt, pepper, and more Tabasco if needed.
Build the turkey burgers
Finely mince the onion and celery. Mix well with the ground turkey.
Form 8 thin patties from the turkey mixture. Drop 1 tblsp pesto on top of four of the patties. Top each with one of the remaining four patties and seal the edges with your fingers. The burger that results should be no more than 1 ½ inches thick. Do NOT salt the burgers before cooking.
Bake at 400o for twenty minutes, broil or pan broil for about 7 minutes on each side, or cook outside on the barbeque.
Top with your favorite burger fixings and serve hot. This may be the juiciest turkey burger ever. Yum!
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In addition to being juicy and delicious, these burgers offer more nutrition than the average burger.
Fresh pesto is a good source of manganese, onions a good source of potassium, quercetin, and vitamin C.
January 3rd, 2010 at 10:12 am
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