Wild Rice Burgers

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. My life is kind of hectic sometimes. Or most of the time. So whenever you see a post of food I’ve made, it’s food I’ve made for my family. I don’t have time to make meals just for this blog, so most of the stuff you see is what I’ve made for dinner on a particular night.

While this works for me most of the time, winter in Minnesota is not the ideal time for taking dinner photos. Why is that? Oh, right, because it gets dark about 4:30 pm these days. And we don’t eat that early. So it makes for challenging photo sessions, to say the least. It’s sort of comical, actually.

Anyhow. Tonight I made totally amazing burgers. I’m not a huge burger girl, really, but at the Minnesota State Fair every year I have a wild rice burger. To be clear, it’s not like a vegetarian burger that’s just made from rice. It’s a beef burger with wild rice in it. It’s pretty darn tasty. And since I ended up with some extra wild rice after Christmas, I thought I’d try my hand at burger making.

I started out with 1 lb. ground beef, and added 1 cup cooked wild rice, about 1/2 cup each minced onion and finely diced portobello mushroom, as well as 4 cloves minced garlic. Not in this photo (but important to the burgers) are: 1 egg, 1 tablespoon dried parsley, and salt & pepper.

Mix this all up together and split into 6 equal portions.

Form these into patties. Make sure to make the patties thinner than you want the final burger to be. I make mine pretty thin because I like my burgers to stay more patty-shaped and less spherical-shaped. Also make them a bit thinner in the middle so they stay even. Burgers like to shrink up a bit while they cook.

Throw them on a hot grill, or pan-fry them. Since it was a record-breaking 50-something degrees today (in January! In Minnesota!) we opted for the grill. However, we had to use a flashlight to use it because it was after 4:30. Anyhow. Cook them to your desired doneness, and when they’re nearly done, throw some cheese on them and let it melt. We had provolone, but cheddar or swiss would be really good with these, too.

To serve, layer baby spinach leaves on the bottom of a bakery bun, then top with the cheese-covered wild rice beef patty. Add your favorite burger condiments and finish with the top of the bun. If I had time, I would have also sliced a tomato to put in there, but I had a hungry, sleepy toddler to contend with, so the tomato didn’t make it.

For a recipe that I pretty much made up on the spot, this turned out great. It’s juicy and full of flavor. My sister said she thought it was better than the one at the State Fair.

I’ll take it. 🙂