Healthy Eating
Ginger-garlic turkey burgers are a healthy recipe you can eat often. Healthy eating requires thinking, planning, and adjusting your recipes so that you can eat to live, and not live to eat. Unhealthy recipes add sugar, MSG, or other ingredients that cause high cholesterol, fatty liver, contribute to high blood pressure, and even diabetes. Understanding the health benefits of ingredients is important to know so you can plan your recipes or adjust old ones.
Ginger-Garlic Turkey Burger Health Benefits of Ingredients
Here is a list of the ingredients explaining their health benefits:
- Ground Turkey – Turkey is a great substitute for ground beef because it is low in calories and high in protein. It can reduce saturated fat and cholesterol in your meals. It contributes to your daily requirements for B vitamin and selenium. To reduce the fat, buy ground turkey that is fat-free or has only 10% fat. If it’s fat free it can be dry so add a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil for moisture. You can use it for meatballs in your favorite pasta dishes. It’s a great substitute for a tasty meatloaf and can be used in any recipe that calls for ground beef.
- Ginger – The U.S. National Library of Medicine includes ginger and recognizes that it is used around the world to treat loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting after surgery or from cancer treatment. It helps reduce or eliminate flatulence, upset stomach, colic, morning sickness and even motion sickness.
- Garlic – Caution: Consult your physician before eating garlic if you are taking any blood thinning medicine such as Coumadin, Plavix, and aspirin. Eating garlic will cause them to become stronger and increase your risk of bleeding. Garlic is a natural blood thinner. For thousands of years, garlic has been used as a food and medicine. I saw a documentary on WWI and it said that soldiers were given garlic to prevent gangrene and that it was used on wounds as an antiseptic. Garlic is used to prevent heart disease, hardening of the arteries (buildup of plaque in the arties, blocking blood flow leading to heart attack or stroke), reduce high blood pressure, and even boost the immune system. Garlic contains antioxidants that fight off free radicals that build up as we age, contributing to heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s. (Source: Garlic, University of Maryland Medical Center)
- Onions – Onions contain chromium which helps to regulate blood sugar. They are used to reduce inflammation and heal infections. Raw onion helps to increase HDL good cholesterol. Onion enzymes reduce plaque by cleansing it from the blood, helping to reduce dangerous blood clots. Eat onions daily to continue the self-cleaning detoxification.
- Organic Tamari – Tamari is a soy sauce that is gluten-free and a great substitute for regular soy sauce. It’s thicker and very flavorful. Tamari contains less salt than traditional soy sauce and derives its flavor from amino acids from soy protein. Traditional soy sauce gets its flavor from wheat fermentation which is unhealthy for anyone who is allergic to gluten. It’s a good source of vitamin B3, manganese, and tryptophan. If you are on a reduced salt diet then Organic Tamari is a better choice for you.
- Extra Virgin Olive Oil – It is considered a healthy fat because of its monounsaturated fatty acids. Olive oil is included in the Mediterranean diet which is a staple for some of the healthiest people in the world. Not only does it have fatty acids but antioxidants, helping to reduce heart disease.
Now that you know the health benefits of the ingredients, let’s make ginger-garlic turkey burgers!
Ginger-Garlic Turkey Burger Recipe
- Cut a piece of ginger to 1 inch, peel the skin. Chop the ginger into very small pieces
- 3 or 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped (can be added raw to mix)
- Half an onion chopped (can be added raw to mix)
- 1 pound of fat free or 10% fat ground turkey (if it’s fat-free, add 1 tablespoon of olive oil for moisture)
- 1 or 2 tablespoons of Tamari Sauce
- Add fresh ground pepper to the mix
After chopping ginger, garlic, and onions, add 1 to 2 tablespoons of olive oil to a frying pan. Sauté ingredients for one minute.
- In a mixing bowl add turkey burger (olive oil if needed), Tamari sauce, fresh ground pepper, the sautéed ginger, garlic, and onion (or add chopped raw garlic and onion). Make sure your hands are clean or that you’re wearing food-handling gloves to prevent cross-contamination when you mix everything together.
- Using a burger press, take some of the mixture, and between your hands, roll it into a ball large enough to press into a burger patty.
- Place on hot cast-iron grill or outdoor gas grill and cook 4 to 6 minutes per side or until cooked through. Makes 4 to 5 burgers depending on how much mix you use for each patty.
Plate the ginger-garlic turkey burger on 2 or 3 butter lettuce leafs (fold lettuce over your burger and pick up to eat) or place it on a burger bun. Top it off with your choice of healthy sauces, sliced onions, sliced tomatoes, or anything else you would like. Even a fresh pineapple ring might be delicious!
This is just one recipe that you can make for a healthy meal to help meet your weight-loss goal. My family loves ginger-garlic turkey burgers. Check out the video below for another healthy recipe that you can adjust the ingredients by leaving an ingredient out, or add one or two more. To your health and weight loss!
Bon Appetite!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoRh1kCFUQY