Homemade Turkey Burgers

Hey, I'm Chef Yankel, and today it is turkey burger day. I'm gonna show you how to make the perfect grilled turkey burger. I'm also gonna give you the secret to my 15-minute all-season barbecue sauce. And we're gonna top it off with some air fryer onion rings. Let's get started. For our patties, we're going to make a mix of our ground turkey and a couple of other ingredients. And I've chosen two of them very specifically because when it comes to grilling lean meats, one of the problems people encounter is they dry out. And so we're gonna counter that by adding a little bit of moisture naturally and a little bit of fat naturally. So the moisture's gonna come from some chopped onion. Lots of water and onions. I'm gonna use half an onion, diced small, and then I'm gonna reserve the other half for our barbecue sauce. So I'm just gonna give that a peel, take the outer layer off. And by the way, you can save these and make really nice vegetable stock out of them later on if you want to. We'll put that aside. And now I'm gonna go with a pretty fine mince because I wanna cook the turkey burger really fast. And so I want the onion to cook along with it as quickly as possible. So I'm just gonna go super thin slices like this. And once I've got my thin slices, I'll turn my onion sideways. Just angle that knife in slightly towards the onion. Watch your fingers. And a little dicing motion. And that gives us a really nice mince that's gonna cook so quickly along with the turkey burger. So we're gonna put that right on top of our mix. And now for the fat, just a little bit of olive oil. You can substitute butter. Bring it to room temperature first so it's a little bit easier to blend together. You can substitute a different type of oil. And if you wanna go bacon fat, go bacon fat. All right. Healthy pinch of salt. Little bit of dried cumin. Just adds a really nice flavor to the turkey. Obviously some garlic powder. I'm like into dried oregano right now. But if you have an Italian seasoning blend, you can do that. I'm really drying my own oregano fresh. It's absolutely incredible. And you can just put it in an air fryer or in a very low temperature oven and do that. We've got some fresh cracked black pepper. And finally, a little bit of cilantro that's just been chopped up. And you can skip this part. I know cilantro is polarizing for some people. Or you can use your favorite herb. And so now we're just, it's very simple. We're gonna mix this combination up. I basically wanna make this mix as simply as possible. Not overwork it. And that's gonna help keep the turkey burger nice and tender. And now for measurement, I'm gonna use a scoop. But you can go free form. And we're gonna go for sort of four medium size patties. What we want with a turkey burger is we want it to cook fast and we want a nice crispy outside. And we want that inside to stay moist and tender and juicy without overcooking. And so for me, that means kind of thin, about a half an inch of thickness right onto our tray. And so for a pound of ground turkey, you're gonna get four four ounce patties, which I think is the perfect size that allows you to either have a nice portion or feel good about going back for seconds. I'm going to thoroughly wash my hands with hot soap and water because I'm working with raw protein and then let's get started on our barbecue sauce. So one of my favorite things to pair with a turkey burger or really lean meats in general is a nice juicy sauce that's just gonna add to that juicy moist texture that we're looking for that we struggle with. And so I've got my 15 minute barbecue sauce and I would say the clock starts now. And I always start with the same base. Barbecue sauce basically is a sweet component, a sour component, maybe a little bit of spice. And then after that, it's really up to you. And so I try to go seasonal. Right now I've got some beautiful fresh mangoes and some limes. That's what's going in as sort of my main flavors. But the baseline is really simple. It's always going to be a little bit of garlic into a medium hot pan. It's gonna be a little bit of diced onion, about a half an onion into that pan. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna sweat the vegetables. And so basically that means I just want them to open up to start to release some of their juice and their flavor. And once that happens, we can add the rest of our ingredients. I can speed that up a little bit by turning the heat up, but I wanna be careful not to toast them because the garlic is gonna turn bitter if I let it toast too much. And I do wanna get a little bit of flavor out of my tomato paste, which is gonna be our next ingredient. The rest of the flavors, I'm using malt vinegar because I love that. It just goes so well with barbecue, with grill. And I've got a little bit of ketchup. That's sort of the cheat mode. I could reduce the barbecue sauce down forever and get that really syrupy consistency. Or in under 15 minutes, I can cheat with a little bit of ketchup. And of course, salt and pepper. So while we let those sweat, what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna add both the lime zest and the lime juice. And so I'm gonna just roll it, make it easier to juice. And then I've got this little contraption called a microplane, and it's very helpful for just getting the zest off. I don't want the pith, the white underneath, because that tends to get a little bit bitter. So just a really a gentle zest over the top and I turn the lime as I do it. So I'm gonna add my lime zest next. We're gonna let that sort of sweat with the vegetables as well. If you want it done in 15 minutes, gotta keep it moving. Once you start to hear that popping, that crackling, you know the moisture is starting to leave the onion. It's starting to leave the garlic, get into the pan, get into the flavor. They're starting to sweat. So that's a great time to add tomato paste. I'm gonna go with a couple of tablespoons. That's all I need. And I'm gonna let that heat up and bind with the vegetables and brown up just a little bit. That'll give us a richer flavor in the barbecue sauce. So I'm gonna let that brown just a bit and then we're gonna deglaze with the vinegar. All right, we've got some beautiful browning happening in the pan. Time to go in with the malt vinegar. I'm gonna stir that all up. I'm gonna let the vinegar reduce by 25% or so, if that, and that'll take roughly 15 to 20 seconds as it binds with the tomato paste and the heat of the pan. And as you notice, all that brown from the bottom of the pan is now gone. Well, not gone, that's flavor that's in the sauce now. All right, next we're gonna add some chopped tomatoes. A little bit of juice included. Stir that up. I'm gonna add my mango. And now I'm just gonna let it simmer for about five minutes. At the very end, I'll add my lime juice. I don't like to add lime juice at the beginning because it can get bitter if it cooks for too long, I've found, in something that you want a gentle flavor from. And then I will gauge how much ketchup I need to make that beautiful puree. Maybe I don't need any at all. I prefer it that way, but if I do, it's there and we're gonna blend it right in the pan. So our vegetables, our mango, everything's had some time to come together flavor-wise and soften up a little bit, which is gonna make it really easy for us to puree. So I'm gonna add some lime juice. Got my trusty squeezer. These are invaluable. They also catch the seeds if you were to have seeds in something you were squeezing. We're all in with the lime juice. Nice and citrusy. And it's really gonna match all the flavors that we incorporated into the turkey burger. It's gonna be so good. Some salt and pepper. We haven't seasoned yet. Do this by taste. Start with a little bit. Have some spoons nearby. Give it a stir. Give it a taste. Oh, gosh, that is delicious. Tomato can use and take a lot of salt, so don't be afraid to over-season slightly. Also remember, you're going to be seasoning everything else that's gonna be going on our burger via the sauce, gently, but seasoning nonetheless. We'll give that one more taste. That is good. I'm betting we don't need ketchup, but I always keep it nearby just in case. So we are done. Off the heat, an immersion blender. Goes right in the pan. And we're going. Right now, you can choose, do you want a chunky barbecue sauce? Do you want a creamy barbecue sauce? Do you want a salsa? Because we very nearly have a mango-lime salsa going on right here. So you can make all those choices. You've got three possibilities right in front of you. Look at that beautiful, creamy texture. Smells amazing. I already know it tastes good. Going right into my jar. Jarring my own barbecue sauce. And remember, you can substitute so many of the flavors in here. Your barbecue sauce base is always going to be some aromatics like onion and garlic, some vinegar for that sharp contrast, a little bit of tomato for acidity because it helps meat cook well, and a little bit of sweetness. And however you get there, a barbecue sauce it can be. One lime-mango barbecue sauce ready to go on our turkey burgers. On to onion rings. For a little bit of added texture, we're going to do a super quick air fryer onion ring that we're going to top the burger with. So I'm using one and a half scrambled egg that's just been beaten within an inch of its life. That'll incorporate a lot of air and give you a fluffier, crispier bite. And then here I'm using, basically it's a chicken fry. It's a pre-made mix that you would use to get a really nice crispy fried chicken. You can substitute flour. Just don't forget to add a little bit of salt and pepper if you're going to use a plain flour. And you can use any type of flour you like. I love doing this with almond flour for a particular type of dish where it gives a really nice nutty flavor. So medium thick slices. And I'm just going with the outer rings. These are just going to go into the egg like so. And I will try to maintain one hand for egg and one hand for breadcrumbs so it doesn't get too clumpy. So these are going to go into my breadcrumbs and then my other hand can help coat them. And once they've got a coating, right onto my prep tray. You can double bread these, but I like a little bit of that onion showing through for presentation. I think it looks really nice. Left hand into egg. Scoop it over. Quick and easy, we're going right into the air fryer. Evenly spaced as possible. But again, we know the air fryer is at its best when it's got a little bit of room between them. It really doesn't need it because it circulates air so quickly. These are going to be done in no time. We're going to go 10 minutes at 390. I can tell you by the smell, these are going to be incredible, but let's take a look. Oh yeah. Super crispy, crunchy. Oh man, will you look at those? That is just going to add so much texture and so much flavor when we stack those on top of our burgers. And speaking of burgers, let's get grilling. I'll see you out there. As you probably know, this is my favorite part. So let's get some stuff on the grill. First thing I'm going to do, just hit these peppers with a little bit of oil, a little bit of grilled pepper. Summertime, so good. Some salt. And they're going to go right on over the heat. Skin side first, let them get a little bit of a char and then we'll flip them over. Next up, we're going to go grilled avocado. I love a grilled avocado. I'm going to grill it in the skin and then scoop it out afterwards when I put it on top. So in there, using my extra cutting board olive oil and seasoning. Oh yeah. All right. And now we're going to get our burgers on. One trick that I have, if I've filled the grill as I've done here, half charcoal, half not, is I can actually get anything where I want it to be just by rotating the grill grate itself. So I've given myself a nice little space to put the burgers on. Now with turkey burgers, we know they're very lean. We want them to cook fast and we want to add a little bit of fat to them to help that process along. And so what I'm going to do to help make sure that they don't stick is get them on there with a little bit of oil on top. And one more. I'm listening for a really good sizzling sound. And if I'm not getting it, I want them over a hotter area. So I'm just going to move them back over and now I can turn my avocado. I can move my pepper over. I've got everything over the hottest area of the grill, but I've got a cool side I can always go to if I need to. I'm going to use that cool side now to start toasting my buns, which I've buttered lightly. We're looking for fully cooked. Obviously we're working with ground poultry. So 165, 170 degrees at least before you take them off the grill. But we can do that without drying them out by being careful about how we grill them. So starting on a really hot side, getting them crisped up really fast and then moving them to a cooler side of the grill so that they have time to heat up without just evaporating all of that moisture. The onions inside are going to start to cook and they'll keep adding moisture where you'd normally start to lose it. After about a minute and a half, I'm going to give them a quarter turn and that'll give me nice cross marks. It'll also ensure that I'm not burning any part of the burger and that it's getting an even amount of time with contact with the grill. Also looks super cool. Oh, those are beautiful. Give that one a little bit more. Let's take a look at the peppers. Charring up nicely. Flip them over now. Buns are toasting up beautifully. All right, pulling the buns off. Let's go right on to our platter. So about five minutes in, I'm ready to flip my turkey burger. Let's take a look at what we got. Nicely charred. And now we can add some of that beautiful barbecue sauce. Looks good. Got my jar. Time to add some of that beautiful mango lime flavor. Just going to give it a brush on top. We'll flip it over a couple more times to let that barbecue sauce get a little bit of char to it, a little caramelization, but it's going to start just absorbing that flavor. I really don't need my avocados charred too much. So once I got some color on them, I know the flavor's there. I can pull them off, let them sit. These are ready for another turn. Oh yeah. Looking so good. I'm just going to keep brushing them as long as they're on the grill. So we're at the point right now. We're about five minutes on the first side, about three minutes on the second side. It's time to move them to the cooler side of the grill and let them finish cooking in sort of an oven environment. And now for my little secret trick. So first of all, I'm just going to turn the grate all the way so that my burgers are now on the cool side. I'll move the peppers off, let them cook a little bit further. If you want to add a little bit of smoke flavor, now's your chance. So I've got a handful of dry hickory chips. I didn't soak them. I just want them to light on fire real fast. Throw them right on the coal. They're going to light on fire almost immediately. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the grill cover on and basically extinguish the flame and that'll create some smoke immediately. And we'll see the smoke rise. So you can see the wood chips are now on fire. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to turn the chimney so it's over the meat. And that way the flow of smoke passes over the meat and out the chimney. This is a whole new meaning to the word turkey burger, I think. Definitely my favorite way to do it. Back to the cool side. Cool side. It's still very hot, so still keep an eye on them, but it is not over direct heat. And you can see my wood chips are on fire again, which is beautiful. Let's give them a little bit more smoke. You can smoke pretty much anything this way. Throw a handful of wood chips onto the coals, close the grill, leave the bottom and the top vents open, put the vent over whatever it is you want to smoke. And basically you extinguish the fire, you get smoke right away. Be careful, a little smoke goes a long way. So I don't want to let them smoke too long. Turkey's got a delicate flavor and we've really worked so hard to get all of these flavors coming together. I don't want to overpower it. So just a little. That looks beautiful. All right. Time to melt our cheese. And I'm going to treat that the same way by closing the grill over them. I'm going with a monster cheese, one of my favorites, especially for turkey. Really nice, gentle flavor, goes really well with the turkey. And if you can't tell, I'm a two cheese slice per burger kind of guy. My peppers are done, I can pull those off. Let's close that grill up one more time, get that cheese melted nice and quick. In the meantime, let's chop our peppers. I'm going to go with just a few thin slices, make sure it's easy to eat. And for our avocado, scoop it right out. Beautiful. And you can see how bright and green it gets after it's been on the grill for a little bit. So much tremendous flavor comes out of there. All right. I think it's time to plate. That looks fantastic. All right, we're good to go here. On to our burger buns. Let's go with some peppers. Right on top. Slices of grilled avocado. I'm going to go with a little bit more barbecue sauce. Just sort of season the inside of the avocado. And then of course, topping it off with our O-rings. Let's find out how we did. We're going to cut into one of these and I'm going to eat it. Oh yeah, that is beautiful. Perfectly cooked, still juicy, still tender. Mm. You know what? When it comes to grilling lean meats, add a little bit of moisture, a little bit of fat, and it's going to be delicious every time. I'm Yankel, go grill something.