Twin dinner turkey burgers serve up birthday nostalgia

These lean burgers are juicy and flavorful and go great with salad and soda.

For our 10th birthday, our parents treated us to our first meal in a fancy restaurant. They bought us new dresses, both velvet, mine green, and drove us downtown on a Thursday night. At 10 you are no longer a little kid, they said, and can act with appropriate grace and poise to fit in at a candlelight dinner. At 10, you are a young lady, not a baby girl, and they led us to our table with pride.

Little girls run around with their hair in a dull snarl of tangles, but that night their two young ladies had chocolate silk flowing down their backs. Little girls rip their stockings and wiggle in their chairs, but that night we sat up straight with hands neatly folded on our laps. Little girls squeak and giggle and eat everything with ketchup, but we ordered fish and salad with clear, bright voices, and said “may I please,” and “thank you, sir,” and felt so grown up.

For our 19th birthday, we treated ourselves to dinner in that same restaurant. We giggled and squirmed in our chairs and wore ripped jeans and too much eyeliner. We ordered fries with ketchup and used too many napkins and waved down the waiter (politely) for many refills of Diet Coke. We were grown up, although we didn’t feel like it, and paid for our meal with our own money and drove ourselves back to our own place we shared.

This week is our 38th birthday, and we treated ourselves to another meal downtown to celebrate. This time I ordered fish and salad with multiple refills of Diet Coke, and we giggled but sat up straight, and I had my hands neatly folded on my new velvet dress. I felt both young, and very much grown up.

We were hungry again by the time we got home from our expensive fries and soda 19th birthday dinner, so that night we pulled some frozen turkey burgers out to fill our bellies before bed. Turkey burgers were a twin dinner (twinner) staple back then, and still have a soft spot in my heart, so I decided to make some for the sake of nostalgia. These lean burgers are juicy and flavorful and go great with salad and soda.

Twin Dinner Turkey Burgers

Ingredients:

1 pound lean ground turkey

¾ cup shredded zucchini

¼ cup minced red onion

½ cup panko breadcrumbs

1 large egg

1 tablespoon salt

1 teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well until you have a smooth paste.

Divide the mixture into four equal portions.

Use your hands to form the patties. They won’t shrink as much as beef burgers do, so you can make them the approximate size of the buns you intend to use.

Heat a large skillet over medium high heat and drizzle in a teaspoon of neutral oil. I used coconut oil.

Drop all four patties down when the oil is hot and cook for 5 minutes undisturbed.

Flip and cook for another 5 minutes.

Flip again and reduce the heat to low. Keep cooking and flipping as necessary to prevent burning until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.

Serve on a whole wheat bun with mayonnaise, Swiss cheese, and alfalfa sprouts. Pickled red onions would also be an excellent addition, if you have them.