Garlic, Ranch and Bacon Turkey Burgers

When you hear of Turkey burgers, what comes to mind is a bland pale slab of beef pressed into a patty and placed on to a hamburger bun and maybe a few little goodies slapped on top of it.  I also know that Turkey burgers on most restaurant menus are kind of stuffed below all the good hamburgers and kind of hidden in the small print. I have had many turkey burgers and cooked a few here at Cooking-Outdoors.com. I can tell you that I have struggled to find a good recipe for Turkey burgers. I have made some creations of my own and have got mild success.

Well, fortunately I was able to find a recipe that is a 4 Star in my book and it was from AllRecipes.com. The recipe was submitted by BIGJRULES and it’s called the Garlic and Ranch Turkey Burger and wow it was good! I tweaked it little as I always do with things but I was able to have a very tasty turkey burger that I was looking forward to having seconds if I could fit another one in me.

Now this recipe is quite easy to prepare and quite easy to put together. 

Ingredients:

1 pound turkey

4-6 slices of bacon

1 ½ ounce package of ranch dressing mix

1 egg

3-5 cloves of garlic, minced

¼ cup of Worcestershire sauce

¼ – ½ cup of dried breadcrumbs

Salt and pepper (season to your personal taste)

Preparation: 

Form your patty by mixing all your ingredients together except for the bacon. Now, Turkey burgers are a little bit on the moist side. The bread crumbs will help absorb some of that moisture and help hold things together. So you’ll be able to form 4-6 Turkey burgers with 1 pound of ground turkey and when you form your patties, make sure that you press a little indentation, almost a little bowl in the center of your burgers. As you know, your burgers will swell up and look like the top of a cup cake if you’re not careful and you don’t want to flat that down with your spatula on the grill because that’s gonna squeeze all the juices out. So by indenting the center of your hamburger, that creates room for that hamburger to rise and you’ll end up with a nice flat patty. 

Take a Cast Iron Pan or a skillet and place it in your barbeque over direct heat and cook your bacon in there. Your bacon will cook rather fast so keep an eye on it and cook until how you like it: crispy, extra crispy, burnt. Burnt is easy to do on a barbeque and be very careful when you cook with a cast iron skillet in the barbecue. Let me caution you that it is HOT. The barbeque is cooking at about 300-350 degrees and you do not what to put your hands on that skillet. You will need at least a double layer of mittens to get that skillet out of there safely, on top of that very hot grease also. Caution is the word. 

Once your bacon is done, set that aside and place your bacon on a paper towel to drip some of that grease out of there. Discard your grease safely and then place your burgers on the grill, cooking them for 5 to 8 minutes on each side until they reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees.

Take your buns and toast them on the grill so that you have them toasted just the way you like it. Get some nice grill marks on there for some flare and put your favorite ingredients on top of that burger. Personally, I’m a mustard fan so I will put a lot of yellow mustard. You can also add lettuce and tomato, a little red onion if you want to. Take your bacon slices and put them on top of there and if you want, put some cheese and pickles on there. Just go for it. You can make a 1-foot tall burger in no time by adding all your favorite ingredients!

Give this recipe a try. It’s really good! I enjoyed it. I am looking forward to having it again. Thank you BIGJRULES at AllRecipes.com. You came up with a great recipe. I tweaked it a little bit to make it more of my own style and my taste but we thank you from the bottom of our barbecue hearts at Cooking-Outdoors.com. We appreciate it and I hope everyone who tries this enjoys it as must as I did!