After a busy morning of running errands and then running outside, we'd worked up an appetite. As I mentioned yesterday, today's lunch menu was Chicken Feta Spinach Burgers, using the leftover Honey Wheat Buns I'd made. I'm really excited to share this recipe because it includes my new favorite way of getting ground turkey or chicken.
Chicken Feta Spinach Burgers
In an issue of Martha Stewart Magazine (let me just warn you now - her name will come up A LOT in this blog) there was an article about making your own turkey breakfast sausage. The instructions were to take turkey breasts, cut the meat into 1" cubes, and freeze the cubes on a parchment lined baking sheet for 20 minutes. Then remove them from the freezer and put them in a food processor. Pulse the turkey until it resembles ground beef. From there you add a mix of spices, roll the meat in parchment paper and freeze. I've made this sausage and its fantastic, but the part that stuck out to me were the steps about making your own ground turkey. I don't need a meat grinder? It's that easy? What the what?
It is that easy.
I personally prefer ground chicken over ground turkey. Chicken tends to stay more moist. So using boneless skinless chicken breasts, I followed the above instructions and voila! Ground chicken! The thing I love most about doing this is you can make as much or as little ground chicken as you need. You can easily get 4 medium sized burgers out of 2 chicken breasts. This also means if you get a package of 4 chicken breasts, you have 2 breasts leftover for another meal. Pretty awesome.
Another great thing about these particular burgers is that both spinach and feta can go a long way.
I usually pick these two up at our "local" (25 miles away) Wal-mart. The spinach is about $4 and it'll keep in your fridge for 2 weeks. You can get salads, burgers, sauteed pasta dishes, even smoothies, out of this big ol' box. Love that. And the feta keeps for around 6 months. Yeah. That's a long time. It costs about $7 and I usually throw it on pizzas, in salads, and in Greek pitas.
There ya go. Using leftover buns, a couple of chicken breasts, and a handful of spinach and feta from your fridge, you have these amazing burgers. So filling, so juicy, so satisfying - we're about to be best friends, once you make/eat these burgers. I look forward to it.
Chicken Feta Spinach Burgers
-2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
-1 egg
-1/2 cup panko (optional. I like a crunch in my burger. You can use regular bread crumbs or no crumbs at all. Do what you want! I ain't yo mama.)
-1 cup of spinach, torn up
-3/4 cup of crumbled feta
-5-6 dashes of Worcestershire
-salt and pepper to taste
-2-3 tblsp olive oil
Cut chicken breasts into 1" cubes and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet and freeze for 20 minutes. Remove from freezer and put chicken into a food processor. Pulse 8-9 times until it resembles ground beef.
Heat oil in a cast iron skillet or non-stick skillet. (I use a cast iron because I like how hot it gets, which ends up giving the burger a nice crunch on the outside. It also is a pain in the rear to clean afterwards, so go with non-stick if you aren't in to rear pain.)
In a bowl, mix ground chicken, egg, panko, spinach, feta, Worcestershire, salt, and pepper. Once all of the ingredients are mixed together well, form your patties. Place in the hot skillet and cook on each side for 3-4 minutes at a time until the burger is completely cooked through.
Note: Turkey or chicken burgers tend to not hold together as well as beef. I find that having two spatulas to turn my burgers in the skillet seems to help them keep together. These burgers are better about staying together, however, because they have cheese.
Yowzah.
Looks delish!
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