Lemon Thyme Chicken Burgers

Lemon Thyme Chicken Burgers

The only pos­si­ble rea­son that my home isn’t the set­ting of a hit real­ity show called “Will They Miss the Bus?” is that Mark Bur­nett has not stopped by at 8:05 a.m. That’s when things are really heat­ing up in the run up to get­ting Esme onto the school bus every week­day morn­ing. Nobody has their coat on, Esme’s back packed is not packed, Julian has dug him­self right into the liv­ing room toy box because the My Lit­tle Pony fig­urine that he must to bring to day­care is in there some­where and sweet mother of God, is Ben get­ting in the shower? Did I men­tion we must, must, must be walk­ing out the door at 8:15 or we will miss the bus?!

In this week’s episode of  WTMB, emo­tions ran even higher when both kids burst into tears at hav­ing to wear snow pants after the offi­cial first day of spring. And although I didn’t have time to dis­cuss the unfair­ness of this with them at that moment — hurry up! — I had to agree. It is just mean how long we’re being made to wait for bet­ter weather and the state of my chil­drens’ snow­suits is the proof. They are ragged. In an unex­pected plot twist I sprinted back from the ele­va­tor — if we run we can make it! — grabbed a pound of frozen ground chicken out of the freezer. I knew there was some fresh thyme and goat cheese in the fridge and some lemons on the counter — so why not throw together my favourite spring flavours into a down­right sum­mery pack­age? Lemon Thyme Chicken Burg­ers, my friends, and they are the bomb. Juicy, flavour­ful and as fast to make as tired old pasta you were think­ing of mak­ing tonight. The cred­its roll over the happy fam­ily tuck­ing into their spring-inspired dinner.

Tune in next time onWTMB when I pack a kick-ass lunch only to real­ize it’s pizza day and I’ve wasted 10 pre­cious min­utes and I’m out of toonies…

chickenburger

Photo by Maya Visnyei

Lemon Thyme Chicken Burgers

Ingredients

  • 1 lb ground chicken
  • 2 Tbsp fresh thyme
  • 1 Tbsp lemon zest (the zest of about 1 lemon)
  • 1 egg, whisked
  • 1 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 1/2 onion, finely minced
  • 1/4 cup bread­crumbs
  • 2 tsp dijon mus­tard
  • salt and pep­per
  • 1 Tbsp veg­etable oil
  • 6 whole­wheat rolls
  • top­pings like let­tuce, toma­toes, goat cheese

Method

In a large bowl, mix together the meat, thyme, zest, juice, egg, bread­crumbs, onions mus­tard and salt and pep­per. Of course you can't taste this mix­ture to know if you've got the sea­son­ing right so I'd say a good pinch each of salt and pep­per — assume that you'd sea­son this a bit more than you would if it was beef.

Using your hands, form the mix­ture into 6 pat­ties. I usu­ally hold a patty over a bun just to check that I've made them about the same size. They'll be about 3/4 — 1 inch thick. You don't want them really thick or they'll burn on the out­side before they cook through.

Heat up your pan or bar­be­cue. Add a drop of veg­etable oil to the pan if you're cook­ing them on the stove. Cook the pat­ties over medium/high heat for about 5 min­utes on each side. If you're para­noid about food poi­son­ing as I am, you could whip out your handy dandy food ther­mome­ter (you've got one, right? get one!) and check that the inter­nal tem­per­a­ture is 165 — 170 degrees. Take the patty out of the pan, place it on a plate before check­ing the temp! Okay, every­thing safe? Time to add the extra bits of deli­cious­ness. Layer your buns with what­ever your fam­ily likes but these burg­ers are the shizz with a good schmear of goat cheese.

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