Turkey Burgers w/ Apples and Cranberry Sauce

Grilled Acorn Squash with Orange Glaze

Entering the weekend, a few buddies and I decided that we would make this week’s Burger Sunday a pre-holiday celebration. The goal was to capture the essence of Thanksgiving dinner with a couple of relatively simple grilled dishes.

Then I decided to complicate things a bit, hoping it would be worth it. A few weeks ago I was browsing A Hamburger Today and something caught my eye. Kenji conducted a Burger Lab to enhance Turkey Burgers and came up with a surprising and wonderful sounding recipe. The short of it is that Kenji’s recipe results in a very meaty, incredibly tasty turkey burger. I backed up my plan by running a blind taste test with my roommate. The complication was worth it.

Armed with a better kind of turkey burger, we brought in a go-to turkey burger recipe featuring granny smith apples and cranberry sauce. The very basic, lightly modified recipe is below:

• Seriously Meaty Turkey Burgers
• Hickory Smoked Muenster Cheese
• Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce
• Thinly Sliced Granny Smith Apples

Sound easy? It really is. The result is a burger that is like eating a Thanksgiving feast in every bite.

Second up, and just as easy, is the grilled acorn squash. This one was a completely ripoff from a Boy Meets Grill episode, so I’m going to link and paraphrase:

• 4 halved acorn squash, halved
• Reduced orange juice w/ brown sugar, cinnamon, and allspice

Prep was pretty basic, but a little time consuming.

1. Roast the squash until nearly done
2. Prep the orange glaze
3. Prep the turkey burgers
4. Grill the squash, skin side down then flip (5 min or until soft)
5. Put cranberry sauce over low heat
6. Grill the turkey burgers, throw on the smoked muenster
7. Slice apples (The thinner, the better.)
8. Toast buns (Warm works best here.)
9. Construct burgers!

This menu made for a dinner that was light but filling and a nice preview of a week full of thanksgiving grilling! Apologies for not having more pictures… the burgers didn’t stick around for long.

It's cheap. It's grilled. It's good. Even with that, it's healthy.

Grilling meatloaf is – in my opinion – the perfect preparation. Charcoal really does this dish justice. The recipe is below is my “Hot Weather Healthy Recession Meatloaf” which is a good mix of being:

1. Cheap as hell
2. Healthy
3. Delicious

To really appreciate this you need to understand that I don’t enjoy spending money, I need to lose a few pounds, and my air conditioner (in my shoddy Texas rent house) is a junker making the idea of baking anything laughable. There. I had to set the scene.

[Header image source.]