Texas Cheeseburgers

The Texas Hot Restaurant in Wellsville, NY serves some amazing Texas Cheeseburgers (or Texas Hots if you're into hot dogs). It turns out they put pork in their sauce, which I'm not cool with. So after much researching, combining and playing with different "copy-cat" recipes, I came up with one that we feel is perfect! I do believe the "Texas" sauce is actually considered Greek, but whatever it is, it's so yummy!

Texas Sauce:
1/4 cup organic butter
1 cup chopped organic onions
1 lb organic ground beef
1 ts organic sugar
1/2 ts organic ground cloves
1/2 ts organic cayenne
1 ts organic chili powder
1 ts organic nutmeg
1 ts organic dry mustard
1 ts organic paprika
1 ts organic cinnamon
2 ts organic Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 ts good salt
1 ts organic ground pepper
2 cloves organic crushed garlic

Melt butter in a skillet. Saute onions and ground beef until beef is cooked. Carefully dump onions and beef into food processor and grind up (This isn't totally necessary but I like it much better "smooth" rather than chunky) Pour mixture back into pan. Add enough water to cover mixture and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and simmer on med low for atleast 45 minutes, longer would be better. Even better would be to throw the sauce together in the morning and then put it in the crock pot on low until dinnertime.

To make Texas Cheeseburgers: (You need burger patties, cheese, hot dog buns, yellow mustard, and diced onion)
Grill thin hamburger patties.Add cheese at the end to melt. Steam hot dog buns to warm. (Yes hot dog buns, this is how the restaurant serves them. But you can use hamburger buns if you wish) Slather buns with mustard. Place burger on bun. Pour 3-4 TB of Texas Sauce on top of burger. Sprinkle with diced yellow onions. Eat and enjoy!
Note that the pic above has the mustard on top, hubby thought it was prettier that way =)

Grown Up Grilled Cheese

Jaz up grilled cheese night by stuffing your grilled cheese with onion, avocado, and tomato! Of course serve it with a side of tomato soup =)

Serves 4

Ingredients:
8 slices whole wheat bread
2 organic tomatoes, sliced
1 organic onion, sliced
1 avocado sliced
8 oz sliced organic cheddar cheese
Sea salt to taste
Garlic powder to taste
Organic softened butter

Heat a skillet over medium heat. Butter both sides of two pieces of bread and place in skillet. Warm for a few minutes and flip. Top one piece with the cheese. Then layer the avocado, onion, and tomato. Sprinkle with salt and garlic powder. Place second slice of bread on top. Cook, flipping often to avoid burning, until cheese is melted. Repeat for the rest of the sandwiches. Enjoy!

BBQ Red Bean Burgers

Normally I'm not one for veggie or bean burgers, but these were super good!!! Jillian Michaels from Biggest Loser posted a recipe on facebook awhile back and I had been wanting to try it for awhile. Well, as with any new and strange recipe, I put it off, put it off, and put it off. It was on my menu for about 4 weeks. I finally tried it tonight! I made some changes so I will post below how I made them.

BBQ Red Bean Burgers

• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1/2 minced onion
• 2 chopped and seeded tomatoes
• 1/2 minced jalapeno (I only used half since I'm feeding kids. If I was to make it for myself, I'd use 2 jalapeno's probably)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 (25 ounce) cans kidney beans, rinsed,well drained(that's a big can, use 2 regular ones if you can't find a big one)
• 1 cup dry breadcrumbs
• 2 tablespoons barbecue sauce ( I use Trader Joes BBQ sauce, YUM)
• 1 egg white, beaten
• 4 whole grain buns, toasted (I used Ezekial buns)
  
  
  Toppings: (any, all, or none) jack or cheddar cheese, organic of course
    lettuce
  slices thick tomatoes  
  avocado
  bbq sauce
  onions
  
  
•  Heat oil in skillet over medium heat.
• Add onion, tomato, jalapeno, garlic and chili powder; sauté 5 minutes.
• Using fork or potato masher, coarsely mash beans in bowl.
• Combine with onion mixture, breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons of the barbecue sauce and egg white.
• Shape mixture into 8  1/2-inch-thick patties.
• Can be prepared 4 hours ahead. Cover and chill
• If grilling, oil the rack or spray grill rack with nonstick spray, then fire up coals to medium heat.
• If pan-frying, heat a little olive oil over medium heat.
• Place patties on grill or in skillet and cook until golden brown and heated through, about three minutes per side. (I did them in a skillet. I did them three minutes on each side, twice.)
• Place burgers on buns.
• Top with any of the above toppings or use your imagination!