Oprah's Favourite Mar-a-Lago Turkey Burger

I realised that I've never shared this recipe on any of my blogs before and since we had it again tonight, I decided to write a review on this. Friends on facebook would have seen it before and because of the photo on fb, I've had Mr Hubby's sisters, my lesbo partner, Niza and my close pal, Shirin to try them out.

an excellent shot by my SIL, Jane and her new sony camera.

All of them agreed that the burger, was awesome!

I first found out about this recipe while watching a rerun of Oprah on Hallmark, a long time ago and only had the time to try it out a couple of months back. Since that fine day, my family has now converted to homemade burgers only, as we discovered how delicious it is (plus the fact that my 'boys' loving the extra large-sized patties I made for them).

nice fat and juicy in XXXL size!!!

According to Oprah, she fell in love with the turkey burger on her visit to Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago, a private club in Palm Beach. I saw it again on the Rachel Ray's show and seeing how fat she made her patties, I suddenly remembered my favourite burger in Chilli's. That sorta made me really hungry and thought I should surprise my loved ones with a nice homemade western dinner. I searched for the recipe on Oprah.com and went grocery shopping with the tiny princess.

Mr Hubby was totally quiet from his first bite til the end, with the occasional ooohss and ahhhss. He told me that it was the best homemade burger (oh, correction - the best burger) he has ever tasted and my eldest boy agreed. In her show, Oprah did mention that the apple and celery in the burger were the ingredients that made it so juicy and tasty.

the unprofessional shot of my first attempt taken on a Nokia N86 8MP...

You can find the recipe here.

I'd like to tell you, though (if you're pretty new in cooking but love creating stuff like these for your loved ones) that a recipe serves only as a guide. You do not need to treat it too rigid and can always modify ingredients or preparation according to what you think works best for you.

As for me, since it is not very easy getting turkey meat here, I've tried with both beef and chicken and they came out pretty excellent! Even the cooking time is just a guide. However, I would like to warn you of the amount of salt recommended in the recipe... I do think that 1/2 of the suggested amount is already sufficient. And, at times (depending on the type of minced meat you are using), the cooking of the patties can be a little sloppy as they may not bind well. The first two batches that I made were pretty loose but this third batch was totally firm.

I would also like to share with you other ingredients that I've added to suit my taste, which I believe had contributed to making the burgers even tastier... they are:

- a good jar of gherkins, if you like to have pickles in your burger.

- I replaced pear chutney and used mango chutney instead... somehow the sweet-sourish taste combined with the heavily sprinkled ground black pepper made them taste really good.

- when you think that the burgers are almost cooked, change to a lower heat and put a slice of cheese on the patties. you will definitely feel eager to bite on them instantly upon seeing the cheese melting and binding itself onto the patties.

- I love onions. I absolutely love the taste of onions. so put plenty of freshly sliced onions on the burger buns.

- if possible, use black peppercorns instead of processed fine black pepper. Get one with a grinder where you can refill them.

i told Mr Hubby that if I get pregnant again, he would need to get me this jar of gherkins ;)	black peppercorns image taken from The Nibble

With the recipe, I would make many additional patties and freeze them according to the rule I used when freezing Jada's homemade purees before she turned one - to freeze to a maximum of 6 weeks only. Thus, whenever I feel too lazy to cook, I'd just take them out of the freezer, defrost and cook. It takes less than 10 minutes only :)