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.