Hunk of Meat Monday: Stuffed Burgers

I am horrible about meal-planning. Usually 'round 5:30, I start to think about what we might want for dinner and go into a panic because I want to make intricate, flavorful meals but forget that achieving that goal requires a little bit more planning.

So, out comes the hamburger. Or ground pork. Or, in last night's case, ground turkey.

I've seen lots of recipes out there for stuffed burgers - those are not a new fad. But I've never made one and I've also never had a turkey burger. Two birds, one stone.

So below are two recipes, intertwined - one for turkey burgers and one for beef burgers.

Buzzard's Stuffed Burgers
- 1 lb ground beef or hamburger (did you know they're not the same thing?)
- 1 lb ground turkey
- Worcestershire sauce
- Swiss cheese, torn into tiny pieces
- Shredded Cojack cheese
- 1/2 strip bacon per beef patty
- salt & pepper
- seasoning salt

Fry bacon while ground beef is defrosting - this is essential if you waited until the last minute to get started on dinner. Shred bacon into tiny pieces - one half piece per patty. I only made two patties so one piece of bacon was plenty.


Mmmm, bacon

After beef is defrosted, place in bowl and pour in a good amount of Worcestershire sauce (~4 tbsp) and mix up with hands. Let set for ~5 minutes before dividing beef in half and forming two- half pound patties.



Add in Worcestershire sauce, mix and let marinade for five minutes

Make a divot in the patty and place half the bacon and some shredded cojack cheese. Smush burger around filling, while retaining patty shape.



Add in your stuffing and mush the patty around the bacon and cheese to seal

Do the same process (two patties, cheese, smushing) with the swiss cheese and ground turkey. At this point, I had four- half pound burger patties.

Turkey and swiss sammich, anyone?

Season your turkey patties with salt and pepper; beef with salt, pepper and one of my fave seasonings, Red Robin french fry sprinkles.



Season beef patties with salt, pepper and Red Robin's french fry seasoning

Grill patties over medium charcoal heat until internal temperature reaches 160 F. Enjoy the gooey goodness when you cut into them (we didn't have any buns so ate with forks)!

Don't they look delicious?!

 

Bacon and cheesy stuffed amazingness!

I plan to try again with mushroom stuffed ground pork burgers (for the Ninja, not me) later this spring. Now that it's warming up, we basically spend every minute of every evening outside working or playing around, and 5 out of 7 nights, we end up grilling. I love it - quick prep, quick eat and quick clean up. Triple threat.

The turkey burgers were good but not great. I needed to add bacon in the middle or something. They also needed more seasoning but I'm not sure what is a great turkey seasoning? I would appreciate input and advice for ground turkey seasoning!

If you try these out, let me know if you liked them and leave me tips below, please!

Until next time,
~ Buzzard ~