Easy Cheddar Stuffed BBQ Burger Recipe

CHEAP, EASY, HEALTHY EATS
Next weekend is the 4^th of July – which brings to mind lovely summer evenings with fireworks, outdoor grilling, and family. I won’t have the opportunity to do any of those things next weekend, but I thought that shouldn’t stop me from grilling right now! I looked up tons of “easy burger recipes” and found a whole list of not just beef and turkey burgers, but also black bean, chickpea and portobello mushroom based burgers. It took me two days to decide what I felt like doing and I settled on this exciting recipe that promised patties stuffed with cheese and topped with caramelized onions and barbecue sauce. It also boasted being super easy and healthy. Again, I don’t know if you can call something super healthy if it’s been stuffed, but hey:)

CHEDDAR STUFFED BBQ TURKEY BURGERS
Hop over to Baker by Nature for this quick recipe and then hop back for loads of pictures, cost analysis and my final opinion.

The run-down:

CHEAP
I spent $6 on 92% lean beef, $1 on spinach (which I will also being using on the Strawberry Spinach salad from my prior post), $2.50 on buns, $0.88 on Kraft BBQ sauce. I already had a block of cheddar and all the herbs I wanted at home. That’s a total of $9.50 for 4 burgers, with tons of buns and spinach leftover.

EASY
The recipe on Baker by Nature included photos, and it really did look super easy. I think the hardest part for me was getting my charcoal grill to stay lit (haha, yeah, this was only the second time I’ve ever grilled in my life, and there is no one around to give me any tips. The first time, I googled it and found a super easy step-by-step guide for using small charcoal grills – I have a 14″ tabletop grill. The second time, today, I just winged it, figuring I;ve done this successfully once before, how hard could it be the second time around?) Needless to say, by the time I got the patties on the grill, only half the grill was lit for some reason, so I had to grill two patties at a time, HAHAHA. Oh well, it still worked, didn’t it?

HEALTHY
I used 92% lean beef, a block of cheddar cheese instead of Velveeta and Kraft slices, and Aunt Hattie’s Potato buns. Not exactly the healthiest choices, but you could easily make this healthier.

RECIPE IN ACTION
All in all, it was super easy to make – I chopped up my spinach and mixed it with the ground beef, herbs (salt, pepper, onion & garlic), and BBQ sauce. The patties stayed together perfectly.

     

I did two stuffed patties and two unstuffed because I knew I would be refrigerating two of them for later. I will say this – the stuffed thing did nothing for me, and this is probably because I wasn’t using creamy, gooey Velveeta. I really wished I had just put slices on top.

    

While the grill was lighting (or not lighting, as it were), I started the onions on the stove. By the time the grill was lit and the first two patties were done – so were the onions.

Top the patty with some BBQ sauce and onions, and you’re good to go. They were so simple and so good – even my kiddo loved it. I loved the simplicity of what went into these patties, and the combination of the BBQ sauce and the caramelized onions made a flavorful contribution. This recipe was a total win, and I will definitely be making these again!