Making Turkey Burgers

Amy Riolo: Hi! I am Amy Riolo. Today, I am working in the kitchen at Sur La Table in Arlington, Virginia and I am making Dill and Feta stuffed Turkey Burgers with cucumber, string beans and olive tapenade salad. In this segment, I am going to show you how to make our burgers. So let's get started. What I am going to use is a pound of brown turkey and the great thing about this turkey, I got this from Harris Teeter and you can actually buy ground turkey breast instead of just random turkey meat. So this is about 98% fat free. It's a wonderful option that you can eat all the time. You don't have to be worried about the fat content in it at all. So it's really great thing to start replacing some of the other more fatty meats with this turkey. So I am going to add that right into our food processor. You don't need these food processor; you can just stir this up together at home and you will be absolutely fine but I am using a food processor here because it makes combining it easier and it actually makes everything a little bit more fine. Now what I am going to add to the food processor is a tablespoon of Dijon mustard. This is one of the things that gives our turkey breast a lot of flavor. Dijon mustard is kind of one of those secret things that not only helps bind but it gives you a lot of flavor. No one is going to be knows what it is in the recipe; it just makes a lot of taste. So I am going to also add kosher salt and here is the freshly ground pepper. And then I have about a quarter cup of baby dill which I have just chopped finely. You can use another herb if you prefer, but I really like the baby dill. I think it goes great with the turkey burger and it goes very nice with our feta. And also baby dill is full of a lot of mineral salts which are great for us. So I am going to go ahead and mix this, I don't know, just until everything is mixed. Okay, so now we can see how the herbs are really incorporated in with the turkey breast. That's exactly what we want. This gives us a nice texture for the burger and it also is going to taste really great and make sure that we have a lot of dill in each bite. So then I am just going to form these into small patties. Remember, for poultry, about three to four ounces per person is a perfect serving. It will shrink a little bit as it cooked. We also have to leave room for our bun and our feta which is going to be on top. We just going to keep making these patties. You can make a lot of these at one time and freeze them after they are already cooked and then when you need them, you have the turkey burger ready to go; you don't have to go through this whole process. That's a really good thing to do, especially with children or if you entertain a lot or you want to bring this for a lunch for work or to have an easy supper, just keep things, make double, triple batches and keep some in the freezer. The great thing about that is if you are trying to eat healthy, this will prevent you from going out and getting fast food or getting takeout because you have already got things that are already waiting for you at home.

A lot of times when we do the carry out, it's because we don't have time to do anything else or think of anything else. So if you do cook extra when you do have time to cook, you really set yourself up to have a lot more success in the kitchen and to be a lot healthier. So now we have all our patties and I am going to wash my hands. When we come back, we will pan fry the burgers and bake them.