Stretching Meat, Part 2: Burgers

Make a pound of ground beef go further in these hamburgers stuffed with shredded vegetables, breadcrumbs, and cheese.

For other recipe ideas for a pound of ground beef, please see my Ground Beef Recipe Round Up--106 recipes from food bloggers using my favorite freezer staple. [Because let's be honest, while roasted beets are always in my freezer, they are not my favorite freezer staple.]

When I get an abundance of onions, celery, carrots, bell peppers, and/or summer squash in the farm share, or from my garden, or on super sale at the store, I will fire up my new food processor and make bags of veggies.  I'll finely chop the onions, celery, and peppers, then switch to the fine shred disc and finely shred carrots and summer squash.  Then I'll pack 1/2 to 1 cup of each veggie in zip top bags.

In a perfect seasonal world, the veggies would all be ripe and overabundant at the same time.  Reality for me is that I'll have an excess of squash, peppers and onion one time, or carrots and celery another time.  So I make up bags with what I've got, and use however many bags I need to get the mix I desire.  I store these in my freezer.

Previously I showed how I stretch a pound of ground meat by combining it with an assortment of farm fresh veggies to make taco meat.  But there's more that you can do with a pound of meat and a couple of cups of vegetables.
I recently had a coupon for Fresh Takes* seasoned breadcrumbs and cheese and decided to try making burgers with it.  Here's how it turned out.

Farm Fresh/Fresh Take on Burgers

1 pound ground meat
1/2 cup onion
1/2 cup celery
1/2 cup bell pepper
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 cup summer squash
1 package Fresh Takes (I tried Roasted Garlic with Mozzarella and Feta)

Burger buns
lettuce
tomato
cheese
condiments of your choice

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.  I do this best with my hands.  Divide into fourths, and shape into 4 patties.  These patties were huge, though, you could easily make 6 patties from this mix without skimping.

Grill or fry until cooked through.  This took me a while because of the size and moistness of the patties.  Probably 20-25 minutes total over medium heat in a frying pan.  It was messy, with all the oozing cheese all over the place.  To be honest, though this tasted great, the beef/veggie/Fresh Takes mixture would be better suited to meatloaf.  Next time I get a coupon, I'll try that.

Try this with Confetti Potato Salad.

*I chose to buy this product at the grocery store and I'm not paid for this blog post.