Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Trash Tuna Burgers and Eating Down the Fridge



This post is inspired my roommates, who are wonderful people and fantastic to live with, but are also 90% useless when it comes to cleaning out the fridge.  However, I think this works out well for me more often than not, since I can rescue food that the original purchaser has long since forgotten. 

Prime example: last night's dinner of tuna burgers constructed of things I am sick of looking at in the fridge.  There have been a few vacuum sealed packets of tuna languishing in the refrigerator door for at least a year, along with three or four different bottles of blue cheese dressing, two half-moldy lemons, exorbitantly old capers, and several baggies of breadcrumbs that I've made from salvaged stale bread.  Bam!  Dinner.



Trash Tuna Burgers with Tartar Sauce

Makes 4-6 burgers
Total time: 20-30 minutes (Active time 10-20 minutes)

For the burgers:
  • 12 oz (350g) tuna, canned or vacuum sealed in water, flaked and divided in half
  • 2-3 tablespoons blue cheese dressing (or mayo)
  • 1 tablespoon dijon mustard
  • 1 large egg
  • juice and zest of half a lemon
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons capers (optional)
  • small handful of fresh dill (or parsley), chopped (optional)
  • 1 cup (150g) homemade breadcrumbs (just grind up a few stale pieces of bread in a food processor)
  • 2 teaspoons onion powder (or 1/2 a small onion, minced)
  • salt and pepper and hot sauce to taste
  • 1-2 tablespoons oil
For the sauce:
  • 1/3 cup ( 80mL) blue cheese dressing (or mayo)
  • juice and zest of half a lemon
  • 1 medium-sized barrel pickle, minced

Combine half of the flaked tuna with blue cheese dressing/mayo, mustard, egg, lemon juice and zest, garlic, capers, and herbs in a medium bowl and mix well.  Add the rest of the tuna, breadcrumbs, onion powder/onion, and other seasonings and stir until just-combined (do not over mix).  Form into 4-6 patties.

Heat oil in a heavy skillet and grill patties for roughly 5 minutes on each side until browned.

Combine sauce ingredients in an empty jar and give a good shake.

Serve patties with sauce on bread (or not) with something fresh and green.

0 comments:

Post a Comment