Diced! – Jenna – Juicy Turkey Burgers with Spicy Tzatziki Sauce

Today we have an entrant for the second course of the Diced! competition. Contestants were instructed to create or find a recipe for a main dish containing the following ingredients: Ground Turkey, Gingersnap Cookies, Greek Yogurt and Fresh Jalapeños. They were instructed to make their dish and create a blog post about it, including pictures. You can help determine who advances to the next round. On Friday, after the last post, I will post a poll where you can vote for up to two of the contestants to move on. Vote for the post you like the best. You can vote because of the inventiveness, the yummyness, the use of ingredients, the quality of the writing and pictures or for any other reason. The poll will be active for one week only. Check back and vote. In the event of a tie, the Ranting Chef will choose who advances. More information about Diced! can be found here.

We started with five contestants and have three remaining (in alphabetical order): Ajax, Jenna and Maggie. Ellie had the fewest amount of votes after the first round and Mikaela had to drop out of the competition.

Today’s contestant, Jenna has three blogs including The Burgeoning Gourmet. With all that blogging, I’m glad that she has time to compete here in Diced! Check out her blogs and the post below…

I have to use what?

Right, I’m never a fan of any form of turkey, except at Thanksgiving and even then I force myself to eat it.  But, I have to use fresh jalapeños?  Awesome!  I love spicy food … my intestines would argue the point, but you’d think by now they’d give up and just let me enjoy it.  But I digress.  I love spicy peppers, curries, you name it.  So, how to make what I want to make when I live with two wimpy guys who can’t handle any spice?

Here is my answer to that:

Juicy Turkey Burgers w/spicy tzatziki sauce and better than fries side!

When I saw the yogurt and jalapeños on the list of mandatory ingredients, I went to my ex-husbands Greek roots and thought of tzatziki sauce.  Substitute cucumber for jalapeños and bingo!

I recommend making the Jalapeno Tzatziki sauce first.  You’ll want it to chill in the fridge for an hour or so before using it.

Jalapeno Tzatziki

Ingredients:

Fresh jalapeños, diced (coarsely for more kick, finely for delicate spice)

16 oz plain Greek yogurt

1 tbsp. lemon juice

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 tbsp. fresh dill

1 tbsp. minced garlic

Pinch of salt

Pinch of pepper

Now, you can just forgo the chopping and mincing by throwing all the ingredients into a food processor and let the machine do the work.  However, I have no such machine and my blender is crap.  So dice the dill, garlic, and jalapeños  and mix everything in a bowl.  Put it into the fridge to chill – an hour or longer.

Now onto burgers!

Juicy Turkey Burger

Ingredients:

3 lbs. ground turkey

1 small yellow onion, diced

¼ cup of ginger snap crumbs

1 tsp. thyme

2 tsp. Meat Magic (combination of spices by Chef Paul Prudhomme)

2 eggs

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. pepper

3 cloves garlic, minced

In a bowl, toss in the ground turkey, thyme, Meat Magic, salt, pepper, and eggs.  Using a rolling pin, I took the ginger snap cookies and ground them down to bread crumb consistency.

Toss into the bowl.  Dice up the onion and garlic then sauté it in the olive oil.  While this is sautéing, you can start work on the potatoes.  Let the onions and garlic cool a bit, until you can touch the oil without hurting yourself.

Put all of it, oil included into the meat mixture.  The added oil will help keep the turkey juicy!  Mix well and make patties as thick/thin as you like.

Cook as you desire.  It’s apparently summer here for the day, so I’ll be grilling!  These turned out so good, and the ginger snap gave it a really nice flavor.  I swear, I never would have thought it was turkey!!!

Better Than Fries Side

Ingredients:

Russet potato

Olive oil

Sea Salt

Pepper

Butter

Wash and dry your potato(s).  Carefully slice down, not going all the way through.  After slicing, wash them again, fanning out the slices a bit.  Place on a non-stick baking sheet.  Melt down butter and drizzle over the potatoes and then drizzle with olive oil.  Sprinkle with pepper and sea salt.  Feel free to sprinkle rosemary or other herbs you like on your potatoes!

Bake at 425 for roughly 40-60 minutes, depending on how big of a potato you picked out!  About 20 minutes in or so, I pulled them out to drizzle a bit more oil on them.   This makes the skin nice and crispy.  You can just pull the slices out when it’s done. J

Remember – check back after the last post to vote on who advances in the Diced! competition.