Goat cheese & spinach chicken burgers

I love burgers. Prior to my new healthy lifestyle, I recall that I often ate burgers three or four times a week. It doesn't help that both my mother and father are exceptionally gifted when it comes to burning meat (my mom seasons her burgers incredibly; my dad grills his - enough said). I rarely eat burgers of the beef and cheese variety these days because they happen to be at the top of my list of trigger foods, but I am now only just stumbling upon how versatile a burger can be.

I'm a really big fan of using what I have in my fridge to come up with recipes. It helps eliminate the amount of food I end up throwing away and it also keeps food costs down. Whenever I find a sale, I stock up on an item and I try to come up with creative ways to use it so I'm not stuck in a loop of culinary redundancy. Something fairly new to me that I've been experimenting with is ground chicken and ground turkey. To any and all fans of ground beef, I recommend either. Ground turkey and chicken taste virtually identical to ground beef in most recipes, I've found, and they are also leaner and healthier for you. Additionally, when you use ground poultry instead of ground beef, you generally don't have to worry about a plot point of Ghostbusters II hiding in your food.

I have several packets of ground chicken just taking up room in my freezer. So I pulled out one and decided to give goat cheese and spinach chicken burgers a go.

 

You will need:

1 lbs. lean ground chicken

1 med. yellow onion

1 cup baby spinach (can use frozen, but fresher is always better)

1/4 cup crumbled goat cheese

1/2 teaspoon ground sea salt

1/2 ground black pepper

a pinch of ground thyme

1 garlic clove minced

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

 

 

Start by shredding/chopping your baby spinach. Then dice up your onion. Put chicken, onion, spinach, garlic, seasonings in a bowl and mush together as you would when making a meatloaf. I use my hands, but you may also use a spoon/potato masher/etc.

 

The way I portion out my burgers is like this: I form a ball in the center of my bowl and mark a cross over top with my fingers so I can make perfectly portioned burgers every time. You may choose to do smaller burgers for sliders if you like, but this time, I decided to make four burgers.

You're going to cook these like you would any burgers - grill them, broil them, whatever. I chose to 'grill' mine because I have a nifty Caphalon grill pan. I used the small amount of olive oil to put on the pan because lean ground chicken tends to need a little oil since it lacks the fat of ground beef. I put my burner on medium-low and cooked for about seven minutes on each side. Here are my results:

I let the minimal grease drain off into a paper towel before eating and served breadless (bread is a trigger) with a kale Caesar salad with tomatoes and raw almonds. Yum.

 

 

Topping ideas: I'm not going to lie, this burger is pretty flavorful all on its own. My mom liked ketchup on hers. Goat cheese makes a pretty great marriage with onions, so if I was topping with something, it'd be either an oven-roasted onion or half an onion sauteed. I also chopped up a burger and tried it in a kale Caesar salad. It was delicious.

Recipe variations: Chicken is pretty versatile. You essentially have to think of flavors you'd like with a chicken breast - barbecue sauce, for example? - and add them into the ground meat. If you like more Mediterranean tastes, these burgers would be yummy with chopped olives, sun-dried tomatoes, and feta. You could also take this a step further and make chicken meatloaf. Just add in a handful of gluten-free or whole wheat breadcrumbs, an egg, and some tomato sauce or paste and throw it in the oven. Yummy.