burger

Green Goddess Burger

My take on the Green Goddess Burger featured on Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution.

Macheesmo’s

Green Goddess Burger

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The idea of a healthy burger might be a bit strange to some people, but that’s what Jamie Oliver tried to do in his recent season of Food Revolution: LA.

He worked with a local LA fast food joint to replace some of their unhealthy (but delicious looking) burgers on the menu with burgers that will hopefully be equally delicious but also healthier.

There were four burgers that he made on the show, but you guys voted for the Green Goddess burger so I did my best to recreate it!

It turned out really awesome although I’m not sure I mastered the health parts.

Green Goddess Burgers

Serves:
9 Burgers
Prep Time:
Total Time:
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My take on the Green Goddess Burger featured on Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.

Ingredients

3 pounds ground beef.  I recommend getting a chuck roast and grinding it yourself!
Buns
Green Goddess Sauce:
2 Cups Greek yogurt
1/2 lemon, juice only
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
1/3 Cup fresh parsley, minced
Pinch of salt and pepper
Basic Guacamole:
4 avocados
1-2 shallots, minced
1-2 jalapenos, seeded and minced
Handful fresh cilantro, minced
2 limes, juice only
Pinch of salt
Other burger toppings:
Grilled onions
Sprouts
Roasted red peppers

Instructions

1) For green goddess sauce, mix ingredients in a bowl and season with salt and pepper.  Can be made in advance.

2) For guacamole, dice ingredients finely and mix.

3) For burgers, separate meat and fat on chuck roast.  Grind or process fat until it’s finely ground into a paste.

4) Remove fat and grind/process meat.  Don’t overprocess meat.

5) Stir meat and fat together or send them through the grinder together.

6) Make 9 1/3 pound burgers.  Season well with salt and pepper.

7) Grill burgers over high heat for 4-5 minutes per side.

Making the Burgers

Now you could definitely just use normal hamburger meat for these guys, but in the Food Revolution spirit, I thought it would be good to grind my own meat.

Also, I think you can get a lot better flavor by grinding your own. Remember that most ground beef you buy at the store is just scraps.

So you can do a lot better for not a lot of money by getting a nice chuck roast and doing it yourself.

chuck roast
There are burgers in there…

To do this right, step one is cutting out most of the fat from the roast. This takes some patience, but you should be able to cut off the large pieces of meat and then slice off the layers of fat.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Once you have most of your fat cut off, send it through your grinder or pulse it in a food processor until it’s basically a paste.

The reason you want to do the fat separately is because you want the fat to have a finer texture than the meat.

fat ground
The fat stuff.

Then take out the fat and grind the meat. If you’re using a food processor, be careful not to over-process the meat or you’ll have a paste instead of ground beef.

Then you can mix the fat and meat together! If you’re a perfectionist, you could weigh the fat and meat and make sure that you are getting about 20% fat which is what I like to use in my burgers.

I think I over-shot the fat content a bit in this round (so much for healthy). I probably had closer to 30% fat. Oh well!

beef mixture
Maybe a bit too much fat!

Three pounds of chuck roast should make about nine burgers. I like to make mine about 1/3 of a pound. Just shape them lightly with your hands and try not to press down on the burgers too much.

Season them all really well with salt and pepper.

burgers made
Looking good!

The Green Goddess Sauce

In the show, Jamie slathers his burger with some sort of yogurt-based sauce. It’s kind of hard to see what’s going on there, but I had to guess, so I went with these things:

dressing
Making a green goddess.

Mixed all together they make a great creamy sauce that takes the place of cheese on the burger. You can make this in advance if you want. It’s better on day two actually.

dressing
Tasty stuff.

Guacamole

The second topping for the burger is just my standard guacamole recipe. Guacamole on a burger is one of those fantastic combinations that once you have once, you’ll want it every time.

These days, I don’t really make a small amount of guacamole. Whatever doesn’t go on the burgers can go on chips!

avocados
Artsy avocado shot….

When making guacamole, just be sure to dice all your ingredients well. It’s never good to get a huge bite of jalapeno or something.

Other than that though, just mix everything together! The lime juice is really important as the acid will keep the guacamole nice and green.

guac
You can never have too much.

Cooking the Burgers

Obviously, the best thing to do is grill the burgers. If you don’t have a grill though, you could definitely do these in a pan also.

Grill them over high heat for 4-5 minutes per side for a medium burger and be ready for some serious flare-ups, especially if you have 30% fat like mine were…

grilling
One of my favorite things.

Once the burgers are done, slather one side of the bun with the green goddess dressing and the other side with guacamole.

This one I kept pretty standard, but feel free to spruce it up with sprouts, grilled onions, or red peppers also.

making burger
Really good.

I’m not entirely sure that my version ended up being much healthier than a normal burger, but I did use a whole wheat bun. So I get some points, people!

In all seriousness though, it’s a delicious burger and very different than anything you’ll find at a fast food place which is the point!

6 Responses to “Green Goddess Burger” Leave a comment

  1. Wait, you can make your own ground beef in the food processor? I always thought I needed a grinder so I never tried. Now just to figure out if it's worth it since I'm getting grass fed ground beef for $3.19/lb at my Farmer's market, and I got a 20lb share this winter for $50. How much better is the taste?

    1. If you have a good ground beef source like that, then probably not much. I actually think it's more of a texture thing. I don't like my ground beef to be mushy which sometimes over-processed ground beef can be. Doing it this way allows you to make it the texture you want.

  2. So I'm confused…is it healthier because of the leaner beef, the grilling, or the toppings? Because we eat grilled burgers that come from my parents beef (best in the world! Not that I'm biased ;-), and I only put ketchup on mine (I'm kind of boring like that).

    1. Haha… I'm not sure that my version is AS healthy as his… I should've cut back on the fat a bit. The toppings are definitely healthier though and whole wheat bun! :) At the end of the day, it's still a hamburger…

  3. Maybe instead of trying to label something like a burger as "healthy," what we should focus on is encouraging people to eat fewer of them, but make those fewer be better. So that instead of eliminating or (possibly worse) miss-marketing certain foods in the interest of healthy diets, we should make them occasional treats — that are *really* treats!

    That way, your 30% fat wouldn't matter in the slightest, and you'd still get to fire up the grill & have a bunch of great burgers with pals sometimes. Naw'mean?

  4. Had these tonight made with ground turkey (seasoned with cilantro, parsley & a splash of Frank's hot sauce) and a side salad of cucumbers, blueberries, feta cheese with a white balsamic vinagrette…awsome summer dinner after a 100 degree day! Love the guac and green godess sauces!.

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