BBQ Chicken Burgers

Last week, I was one meal shy of having a complete meal plan when I was reading other people's meal plans online.  Someone said they were going to have chicken burgers, and I thought they sounded good, but there was no link to a specific burger, so I just googled chicken burger.

The first one that popped up was for a BBQ Chicken Burger, so I went and read through a few of the recipes before finally settling on this one.  It was a fast meal that combined an ingredient that I had never used before (Gorgonzola cheese) with two ingredients that I had never had together (grape jelly and BBQ sauce).

BBQ Chicken Burgers
slightly adapted from Shine
Ingredients
1/3 cup bottled barbecue sauce
1/3 cup grape jelly or seedless raspberry jam
 2 tablespoons fine dry bread crumbs
 1 tablespoon bottled barbecue sauce
1 teaspoon minced white onion
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon parsley
8 ounces uncooked ground chicken (makes eight burgers)
1/4 cup Gorgonzola cheese
dinner rolls or cocktail-sized hamburger buns, split
Sliced tomato, red onion, lettuce

1) Preheat oven to 425 degree F. Combine the 1/3 cup barbecue sauce and the jelly or jam. Mix with a wire whisk until smooth. Set aside.

2) Meanwhile, in a bowl combine bread crumbs, the 1 tablespoon barbecue sauce, white onion, garlic powder, parsley, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper.
3) Add ground chicken; mix well.
4) Shape into 8 balls; place 2 inches apart on greased shallow baking pan. Moisten the bottom of a glass and press each ball to about 1/4 inch thickness.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.
5)  Construct burger using desired ingredients.

I loved the flavors of this burger.  We ground our own chicken meat to make the ground chicken, and everything was just moist and flavorful.  We used a half cup of gorgonzola, and I would have to say that I would probably use half that amount the next time.  While I love the flavor of gorgonzola, it overwhelmed some of the other flavors in the meat mixture.  The BBQ sauce and grape jelly worked really well in the flavor combinations too.  You could slightly taste the grape flavor in the BBQ sauce and both ingredients went well with such a pungent cheese. 

We made our patties huge, bigger is better, right?  In all honesty, they were hard to maneuver.  I'd say one chicken breast would make two chicken patties, especially for the buns we had.  Our ratios were just a little off.

This is something that I cannot wait to try this summer when the weather is good, and we can grill again.