Chili powder, cumin, fresh jalapeño peppers and cilantro liven up quick and easy turkey burgers. Recipe below.

When did burgers get all uptown? The New York Times reports on this growing trend “In Paris, Burgers Turn Chic.” Beef patties on sesame seed buns are even turning up in three-star restaurants there. The attraction? The Times quotes Paris restaurant consultant Hélène Samuel, who sums it up thus: “It has the taste of the forbidden, the illicit—the subversive, even. Eating with your hands, it’s pure regression. Naturally, everyone wants it.” No, Hélène, tearing apart an entire roast chicken with your bare hands and eating it is pure regression. Eating a burger with your hands is just how you do it. But if you read some of the amazing things French chefs are doing with the lowly hamburger, you’ll be as inclined to forgive Ms. Samuel’s primal enthusiasm as I was.

I’m not so inclined to forgive the excesses reported by Yahoo! Travel in “America’s Most Expensive Burgers.” Okay, so $17.50 for a caviarburger at Serendipity 3 in New York City sounds reasonable enough. And $27 for a Daniel Boulud hamburger stuffed with short ribs, foie gras and truffles isn’t out of the question [sounds pretty good, in fact]. But no amount of shaved black truffles makes a hamburger worth $150. And a couple of restaurants, both in Las Vegas, even pair burgers with rare bottles of French wine and charge $5,000 and $6,000 respectively. Ordering these is a sure sign you’ve got too much money and not enough brains.

But on a simpler, less astronomical level, we like burgers a lot. They’re a quick and easy, totally satisfying weeknight meal. And if eating them with your hands isn’t exactly pure regression, there’s undeniably a nice, relaxed informality to it. Generally, we use ground sirloin for its low fat content. I know most chefs advocate using fattier ground beef for its juiciness, but as long as you cook ground sirloin on the medium rare side, it remains plenty juicy.

Lately, though, we’ve been occasionally enjoying the lighter taste of turkey burgers. Unlike whole roasted turkeys with their distinctive robust flavor, ground turkey presents kind of a blank canvas not unlike chicken breasts. Here, jalapeño peppers, onion, fresh cilantro, chili powder and cumin create a lively, satisfying burger with just a little heat Continue reading “Spicy turkey burgers: A little hot but not haute” →