Recipe Review: Turkey Burgers with Horseradish and Cheddar Cheese

For the wedding someone gave us the Express Lane Meals cookbook by Rachael Ray, and for the first time Friday night I pulled it out and tried something from it. Now, like a lot of you, I can only handle so much of RR on tv. She's too bright, too excited, too toothy for me to watch for more than about 10 minutes, but usually whatever it is she's making sounds pretty good. The premise of this particular book is that if you keep your pantry, fridge, and freezer pretty well stocked with her list of "staples" presented in the front, then every recipe in the book can be completed by purchasing 10 or less items from the market, qualifying you to use the express lane. Hence the title, get it? Aaah, pretty clever.

This recipe for turkey burgers was pretty basic and simple, so I had most of the ingredients on hand and only had to get 2 items from the market. Yay me! So here it is:

1 package ground turkey

2 rounded tablespoons prepared horseradish

1/3 pound sharp white cheddar cheese, diced or crumbled

2 green onions, finely chopped

1 rounded palmful of grill seasonings (such as McCormick's Montreal Steak seasoning)

extra virgin olive oil

spicy brown mustard

4 poppyseed Kaiser rolls

1 tub or can of good quality whole-berry cranberry sauce

Romaine lettuce

Heat a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. In a medium bowl, mix together meat, horseradish, cheddar pieces, scallions, and grill seasoning. Form 4 patties and drizzle them with EVOO. Cook the burgers for 5 to 6 minutes each side. Spread mustard on bun bottoms and cranberry sauce on bun tops. Place the burgers on the buns with lettuce leaves. Serve fancy/gourmet chips alongside.

My Thoughts: I'm a big fan of turkey burgers, Matt loves horseradish, and who doesn't want to marry cheese? This sandwich didn't disappoint, and the leftover patties were even better the next day reheated for lunch. I made one change and that is that I didn't use the cranberry sauce. I know some people are into weird stuff on their sandwiches like that, but I'm not. Matt said he would have liked it, though, so maybe next time I'll get it just for him. Next time, too, I might use a tad less cheese, or at the very least crumble it up into much smaller pieces. My chunks were kind of big, and all of the ones that were exposed to the pan pretty much melted away. But overall this recipe was great--super easy, fast, and tasty.

UPDATE (dated August 5, 2007): I recently made these for the second time, and it's official: They're now one of our favorite foods. But this time I mixed things up a tiny bit, and I think it improved it: 1) I used a little bit less horseradish, like maybe 1 3/4 tablespoons instead of 2 tablespoons. 2) Instead of white cheddar (which was hard to break into small pieces and therefore melted away into the pan), I used a 6-oz package of crumbled gorgonzola. Not only did this not melt away since the pieces were smaller and better distributed, but we thought the flavor was better than the cheddar. 3) While I don't care for cranberry sauce (especially not on a sandwich), Matt expressed interest in trying it. He loved it, so if you're into that sort of weird mix of fruit on your sandwich, more power to ya. If you're not, I put brown mustard on the bottom bun and just a little bit of mayo on the top bun.