Macheesmo

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

by Nick

Serves:

9 Burgers

Prep Time:

20 mins

Total Time:

40 mins

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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.

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.

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!

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.

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:

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.

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!

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.

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…

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.

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!