Pesto & Feta Turkey Burgers - One of My Favorite Dinners

Original post by Sarah @ Renewed Upon a Dream, please visit her website for more great ideas!”

When my husband & I went to San Fransisco for our honeymoon, we ate twice at a burger place that had what was, in my opinion, the greatest idea ever.  They had a hamburger that had pesto as a topping.  I LOVE pesto!  The burger was amazing, which is kinda why we went back a couple of days later.

I love me a burger, but they aren’t something that I feel like I can eat every week.  I try to diversify what we eat.  We have no-meat days, chicken days, beef, turkey, and once in a while pork or ham.  Anyway, when we returned, I decided I wanted to try adding pesto to my burgers, so that I could have that pesto-y meat-y deliciousness whenever I wanted.  Thus, my pesto feta turkey burger was born!

We use lean ground turkey.  The extra lean tends to not be a juicy for burgers, although it works fine in things like a spaghetti sauce.  Without further ado…

Pesto & Feta Turkey Burger
(makes one burger)

1/4 of the package of ground turkey,
1 Tablespoon of Buitoni pesto
A handful of feta cheese

Mix these three things together & form into a patty while your skillet heats up over medium-high heat.

We don’t have an outdoor grill, so we use a skillet to cook our burgers in.  You’ll want to spray your skillet with some olive oil or Pam, or whatever you like to use, before putting in your burgers so that they don’t stick & burn to the pan.

I cook my burgers at a med-high heat level for about 8 to 9 minutes each side.  You’ll see here my turkey burger with the mix-ins on the left & my husband’s burger without on the right.  The just-turkey burgers hold together a little bit better & don’t brown quite as much.  I love a little bit of crispiness on the outside of my burger, while the inside stays cooked, but juicy!  If you want to avoid this though you can cook it for longer on a lower setting.

Once it’s done, I like to add some tomato to my burger, put it on a bun & it’s good to go.  You can add whatever toppings you like, but this is my favorite combo.  We like to have these with sweet potato fries!

I have tried this with ground beef instead of ground turkey, and it is good as well, but I seriously like the ground turkey burger better.  I’m not really sure why, but I feel like the flavors of the pesto & feta are more noticeable in the turkey burger than they are when beef is used.

Do you like turkey burgers?  Have you tried them before?  If you’re skeptical, let me tell you that I told my dad about these burgers, and even though he is totally a beef kind of guy, he loves them, and they now have them quite often at my parent’s home as well.  So really, give it a shot if you haven’t before!

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