Week 4 - Mastering the Mediocre

I find myself already struggling with a dilemma: what I like to eat vs. what I should be learning to cook. I feel like I should be seeking out recipes that would pose a particular challenge or get me to work with a new food. My body, however, doesn't like me to even consider a recipe unless it has my salivary glands doing a happy dance to celebrate the possibility of deliciousness.

Herein lies the problem - the things I like are not particularly hard to cook and contain about 5 key ingredients. My food likes can be boiled down to: melted cheese, massive amounts of carbohydrates, sour cream, black beans and red meat. Not exactly the makings of culinary perfection.

This week was a good example. These chicken burgers sounded tasty and turned out fine (even though I used turkey instead of chicken cause ground chicken is crazy expensive) but were not especially difficult. So I guess I'll eventually have to prioritize and decide whether I'll be happy learning some new recipes with foods I already know I like or whether I'll be able to push myself to really stretch my cooking skills for something I may or may not care to eat. I guess I still have 48 weeks left to figure it out.

CHICKEN BURGERS

Source: FamilyCircle All-Time Favorite Recipes

1 1/2 lbs ground chicken - 1 small onion, finely chopped - 3 T. water - 3/4 c. garlic croutons, finely crushed - 1 T. Worcestershire sauce - 1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese - 1/2 tsp. salt - 1/4 tsp. black pepper - 2 T. chopped fresh parsley - 2 T. olive oil - 6 hamburger buns - Romaine lettuce - Tomato slices

1. Lightly brush a grill rack with vegetable oil or coat a broiler-pan rack with nonstick cooking spray. Then prepare a charcoal grill with medium-hot coals, or heat a gas grill to medium-high, or heat broiler.

2. Mix together chicken, onion, water, croutons, Worcestershire sauce, cheese, salt, pepper and parsley in a large bowl. With moistened hands, form mixture into 6 burgers. Brush completely with olive oil.

3. Grill or broil burgers 3-4 inches from heat, 4-5 minutes per side or until internal temp reaches 165 degrees. Serve on buns, topped with lettuce and tomato.

What Brian says:

For this recipe I can really only comment on the patty itself, considering it's the only constant in each person's burger.  Adding condiments can obviously alter the overall experience.  As far as the patty goes, it's very flavorful.  The addition of garlic croutons, cheese and Worcestershire sauce makes the taste buds work in overdrive when you're used to regular burgers.  

I'm not sure what the difference would have been had we used chicken as the original recipe called for but turkey seemed to do pretty well.  The consistency was similar to beef but slightly more on the softer side.  It was less harsh then ground beef can be and seemed to hold the moisture better, although leaving it on the grill longer can change all of that.  

Overall the flavor was great.  No need to hold back on condiments when the patty itself is very flavorful but I wouldn't go overboard if what you're looking for in a new recipe is something you can't get any other way.

Brian's rating: ****