16 Burgers of Summer: Chile Verde Burger

Good evening everyone! One of our favorite summertime activities is grilling out. After years of living in an apartment without the luxury of a grill, we've been taking advantage of this handy cooking method for the past year and half, ever since we moved into our house. The realm of grilling, much like standard cooking is only limited to your imagination. There are countless recipes out there that can easily be adapted for the grill and their are variations upon variations of each recipe.

Case in point: the burger. Simple in premise, but the final execution is only limited to your resources on hand. In fact, the world of burgers is so diverse, we're giving it some special attention. Starting this week and running each week through the rest of the summer, we're going to be cooking up a new burger recipe. We may change the meat types, the toppings or twist the concept on its head entirely - but the premise will remain the same. One new burger recipe, each week, until the end of summer. We're calling it "16 Burgers of summer" and it starts right now!


16 Burgers of Summer: Burger #1

Chile Verde Burger:

What You'll Need:

1 Cracking Burger Recipe*
Salsa Verde
Jarred Pimientos
Shredded Mexican Cheese


* Let's get the basics out of the way right off the bat. You can't make a burger without having a standard burger recipe. For us, that is and has always been a variation of Jamie Oliver's Crackin' Burger. Although we've covered it several times on the blog, I'll include the recipe for this framework burger once more - then, in future posts, when I reference "one cracking burger recipe" you'll know that this recipe is what we're referring to. (No, we won't use this base all of the time, but it's probably going to be the most used base for all of these burgers, so it's a good one to familiarize yourself with).

Crackin' Burger:

1 Pound 80/20 or 85/15 Ground Beef
1 Tablespoon Yellow Mustard
1/4 Cup Bread Crumbs
1 Egg (Beaten)

Combine all of the ingredients in a large bowl and separate into four equally sized balls. Work the balls into thin patties. They'll keep for 24 hours in the refrigerator otherwise they can be frozen for future use.

Now that the background information is out of the way - let's get cooking.

Preheat your grill to 500 degrees, then clean the grates. Reduce the heat to medium (300 degrees).

The original version of this recipe called for you to make your own salsa verde and your own sliced, pimientos...yeah, right. Listen, I like cooking as much (maybe even more) than the average individual but I'm not going to toil and make my own salsa verde (with 8 ingredients) and my own pimento mix (with another 5 ingredients) when both of those items are readily available at a super market for a low price. It doesn't make any sense to waste your time for small stuff like that - instead we opted to pick up fresh salsa verde and jarred pimientos (total cost $3 - and there's plenty of leftovers).

Grill your burgers to your desired doneness (I don't think we need to cover how to grill meat, right?) then top with the shredded cheese and allow it to melt. Top with the pimientos and then the salsa verde. Serve and enjoy!

The Results:

This was one tasty burger. I've never had jarred pimientos, but was pleasantly surprised at how well their light heat blended with the salsa verde. It all blended with the mexican cheese and the juicy burger - making up one brilliantly flavorful dish!

That's all we have for you this week. We're back next week with the second edition of our burgers of summer and another brand new recipe. Until then,

~Cheers