Pot Stickers/Turkey Burgers

It’s been a whole month since my last post – and what a month!  One of the most notable highlights was an evening with friends, watching top chef, and gorging on Asian Turkey Burgers.  No, please, keep reading:  These turkey burgers are delicious and not, as you might have thought, gross.  I remember once my Stepmom and I declined attending a cook-out when we heard turkey burgers were being served, but these are special, delicious, Asian Turkey Burgers.

see, gorging!

It all started when I decided I NEEDED potstickers.  I sought my favorite blogs for inspiration and was pleased to find the definitive source:  userealbutter.com/2007/10/04/chinese-dumplings-and-potstickers-recipe/ .  I grabbed up all the Asian ingredients I had on hand, which thankfully was quite a few and added dumpling wrappers and ground meat to the list.  Initially, I was going to make a traditional pork filling, but I wanted to share my creation with Jonny D, and he doesn’t dig on swine.

I used the userealbutter tutorial as my guide for construction and cooking technique, as it is quite thorough, but the filling recipe is mine.

Potsticker Fillin’

Ingredients

1 lb. ground turkey
1 1/2 c. shredded cabbage and carrot
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tsp. fresh ginger, minced (save your peelings)
2 tsp. sesame oil
salt and pepper to taste

The accompanying sauce is another personal touch.  I use 1 c. soy sauce, 1 tsp. sesame oil, 1 tsp. sriracha, 1 thinly-sliced scallion, and approximately 1 tsp. of ginger ‘juice’ rendered from squeezing the ginger peelings.

Happy as I was to sit in the auxiliary kitchen, carefully crafting the dumplings, I did grow a bit bored after I had made a decent little batch, when inspiration struck!  I could use the rest of the filling and make some burgers.  So, with very little altering (adding one whisked egg), I did just that.  When I was finished with that project, I had more leftovers to work with — the remainder of the bag of shredded cabbage & carrots.  So, I tossed it in a miso dressing I had on hand and added some cucumber and a pinch of basil, et voila:  slaw

The entire meal ended up being very cost effective, feeding 5 people with a tiny bit of leftovers for latenight snacking.

gorging continued into the night.

More Eating!
onioncloute