The Big Green House

Monday, January 12, 2004

 

Cheeseburger in paradise

As you may have heard, we’re in the midst of something of a mad cow scare here in the Great Pacific Northwest. Even though Our President (who would have absolutely no reason to lie to us and wouldn’t do so even if he did, gosh no) has reassured us that there is nothing to fear, many folks are, in fact, freaking out. And with good reason, as it turns out, since some of the contaminated beef was sold through a local grocery store.

Allow me to go off on a short tangent here. (Ha! Try and stop me!) My father raised beef cattle as a hobby, more or less, during the 70’s. We always had a small herd of no more than 8-10 head at a time. Occasionally we’d sell a couple of them off at auction, and occasionally we’d have one slaughtered for our own use.

In his dealings, my dad became friends with some folks who were in the business on a much larger scale – several thousand head at a time, if I recall correctly. These were people for whom beef cattle was their livelihood, right? Never once would they have considered selling sick stock for human consumption. It just wasn’t done. If you wouldn’t eat it yourself, why would you try to get someone else to eat it?

So I was shocked to find that butchering downed cattle had since become a common procedure. I’m glad to hear that the Department of Agriculture has gotten off their collective ass and done something about this reprehensible and indefensible practice. It’s just a shame that it took an incident like this to shake any action out of them.

Anyway, back to my point. This BCE scare doesn’t affect Science Girl and myself much, since we don’t eat much in the way of meat, generally speaking. We have some sort of poultry several times a week, I’d guess (turkey cold cuts at lunchtime, especially), pork maybe once or twice a month at most (I have a weakness for bacon), and beef hits the table maybe once every two or three months.

For those of you who do partake of the ground cow, however, I’m sure this is a trying time. Having spent a large part of my twenties living on hamburgers, I feel your pain. That’s why I’m here to tell you about the wonders of ground turkey. Yep. Turkeyburgers.

Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way right here, OK? As always, buy organic when you can, wash your hands carefully after handling raw poultry, and for the love of cake cook it thoroughly. Salmonella and E. coli are still a very real threat. However, while the poultry industry isn’t known for its cleanliness and there have been those pesky rumors about some producers forcing the birds into cannibalism, there haven’t been any outbreaks of mad turkey disease that I know of.

Oh, I know what you’re saying. “Turkey burgers are bland. They don’t taste anything like real burgers!” Well stop sniveling, ya little wimps. Of course they don’t taste like hamburgers. Truth is, by themselves they don’t taste like much at all. Or, as SG put it when I told her I was going to write about turkeyburgers, “Don’t forget to tell them how to add flavor.”

But of course.

Around Science Manor, our favorite method goes something like this: put the ground turkey in a large-ish mixing bowl. To it, add chopped onions, some extra-virgin olive oil, a splash of soy sauce (adds color and, let’s face it, salt), some dried oregano, and a small amount of dried chipotle powder. (Go easy on this, especially if you’re gonna be feeding these things to children. The idea is to introduce a little heat and smokiness into the burger, not to chemically remove the tastebuds of your loved ones.) Mix the ingredients together with your hands; just squish ‘em up. If you’re squeamish, you may use a wooden spoon, I suppose. Form the meat into patties and set them aside on a plate. Wash your damn hands. Heat a skillet; add a little olive oil so’s your burgers won’t stick –turkey is really low in fat. Cook as you would a regular burger, but keep in mind that rare is not an option with poultry. Everybody gets well-done burgers this time around.

Here’s an idea that occurred to me the other day while I was walking the dog: the Greek-style turkeyburger. It’s similar to the recipe above, except it would have some sautéed minced garlic, probably some fresh parsley in place of the dried oregano (fresh oregano would probably be good, too, actually), and you’d omit the chipotle and soy altogether. Instead, just add a little salt and black pepper. Here’s the cool part, which may or may not work, since I haven’t had a chance to test it out: each burger would be formed around a ball of feta cheese. Or maybe there’d be a layer of feta inside the burger. As I say, I’ve only ever done it in my head. If you try this out yourself, please let me know how it comes out. I’ve never really cooked with feta before, so I’m not sure if this is even a good idea. It sounds good to me, anyway.

bmarkey 1/12/2004 10:28:00 PM