Recipe Swap - Green Chile Cheeseburgers

Want to see what other Easy Weeknight Meals were made during the swap? Here is the link to the Easy Weeknight Recipe Swap Roundup.

This week's cooking board recipe swap theme was Easy Weeknight Meals. I was thrilled to end up with a burger recipe, especially one as simple as Green Chile Cheeseburgers. The original Bobby Flay recipe sounds great, but too labor-intensive for me. Thankfully, Jenna simplified it into something I could easily make over and over again.


Whenever I see a green chile cheeseburger on a Food Network or Travel channel show they keep it simple with the cheeseburger, chiles, bun and mayo so I did the same. I'm sure it's because this recipe calls for canned chiles, but I thought the burgers could use even more chiles on top. Next time I'd use 2 cans for 4 burgers.

Green Chile Cheeseburgers
Adapted from Bobbly Flay

2 pounds ground chuck
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
8 thin slices provolone
4 hamburger buns, toasted
2 cans green chiles
Mayo
Romaine lettuce leaves, optional
4 thick slices tomatoes, optional

Heat grill to high. Form meat into 4 (8-ounce) burgers and season each burger on both sides with 1/4 teaspoon of salt and a 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Grill until charred on both sides and cooked to desired doneness.

Divide the cans of green chiles onto the burgers. Place 2 slices of the cheese on each burger, close the lid or tent with foil, and cook until the cheese has just melted and chiles are warmed, about 1 minute. Place burgers on buns and top with mayo, lettuce and tomato, if desired.

Burgers on the Grill

We grilled more burgers over Memorial Day weekend:


My plate:


We also had some more of the potato salad and grilled zucchini.

Memorial Day BBQ

For Memorial Day we grilled some burgers and corn and I made my potato salad:


While the corn was good in the grilled corn salad it wasn't as good just eaten off the cob. I love this recipe for potato salad. It's my go-to for picnics:



All- American Potato Salad
Cook's Country Magazine

2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ¾-inch cubes
1½ tsp salt, divided
3 Tbs dill pickle juice, plus ¼ cup finely chopped dill pickles, divided
1 Tbs yellow mustard
¼ tsp pepper
½ tsp celery seed
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup sour cream
1 tablespoon minced red onion
1 rib celery, chopped finely

Place potatoes in large saucepan with cold water to cover by 1-inch. Bring to boil over high heat, add 1 tsp. salt, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until potatoes are tender, 10- to 15 minutes.

Drain potatoes thoroughly, then spread out on rimmed baking sheet. Mix 2 Tbs. pickle juice and mustard together in small bowl, drizzle pickle juice mixture over potatoes, and toss until evenly coated. Refrigerate until cooled, about 30 minutes.

Mix remaining tablespoon pickle juice, chopped pickles, remaining ½ tsp. salt, pepper, celery seed, mayo, sour cream, red onion and celery in a large bowl. Toss in cooled potatoes, cover, and refrigerate until well chilled, about 30 minutes.

Anniversary Burgers and Loaded Potato Salad

As I said in the previous post, last week I was trying not to think about the fact that I was coming down with a wicked head cold. I don't get sick that often but every other year or so I get a really bad cold. By Thursday it was obvious that I was sick, so I tried to rest up since our fifth wedding anniversary was on Saturday. Unfortunately this cold was in for the long haul and I was still very sick for our anniversary. We had a ton of fun things planned (breakfast at the B&B where we got married, a walk along the canal like we did last year, capped off with dinner in the city at one of our favorite restaurants), but it wasn't meant to be. We had to cancel everything. It was a real bummer, but we tried to make the best of it.

On Saturday I wasn't feeling 100%, but I was going a little stir-crazy after being stuck in the house for a few days, so we went out to do some fall shopping. While we were out we picked up some good ground sirloin for burgers.


I thought it would be fun to try a new loaded potato salad recipe I saw on another food blog, so I got the fixings for that as well.


The potato salad recipe is supposed to be like those loaded potato skins you get as bar food in potato salad form. I liked the concept, but it was a little dry and needed more seasoning. Of course I made this when my tastebuds weren't in top form, so I'll definitely play around with this again.


The folks over at A Hamburger Today are always raving about how perfect Kraft American cheese is for hamburgers because of its meltability, so we bought a package of Kraft singles for our burgers:


And let me tell you, these were some great burgers! The meat was fantastic, the bun was soft and pliable and the cheese was wonderfully melty. I could only taste every other bite or so (stupid cold) so I can't wait to make burgers again.


It wasn't a typical anniversary meal, but we were together and that's what counts. The romantics out there will be happy to know we decided to forgo any real celebration this past weekend in lieu of a total do-over on the 18th. We've rescheduled everything, so barring anything crazy happening we'll be celebrating our fifth anniversary in style...a week late.

Belated Fourth of July Cookout

On Sunday we had SP's mother over for a belated Fourth of July cookout. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, I made my potato salad and my mother-in-law brought antipasto.


I love this antipasto with its mix of lettuce, meat and cheese, pepperoni, olives, spicy peppers, onions, tomato and mozzarella:


I made my All-American potato salad:


The burgers were outstanding. After our success with the steaks from the Amish butcher we went back for the ground beef. The price was actually comparable to the supermarket but the quality was way better. You could actual taste a beefy flavor that, when mixed with the char from the grill, made for an amazingly good burger.


I had mine with cheddar cheese, sliced red onion, tomato and lettuce with a little ketchup and mayo.

UPDATE: Here's the recipe for the potato salad.

All- American Potato Salad
Cook's Country Magazine

2 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and cut into ¾-inch cubes
1½ tsp salt, divided
3 Tbs dill pickle juice, plus ¼ cup finely chopped dill pickles, divided
1 Tbs yellow mustard
¼ tsp pepper
½ tsp celery seed
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup sour cream
½ small red onion, chopped finely
1 rib celery, chopped finely
2 large hard-boiled eggs, peeled and cut into ¼-inch dice (optional)

Place potatoes in large saucepan with cold water to cover by 1-inch. Bring to boil over high heat, add 1 tsp. salt, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until potatoes are tender, 10- to 15 minutes.

Drain potatoes thoroughly, then spread out on rimmed baking sheet. Mix 2 Tbs. pickle juice and mustard together in small bowl, drizzle pickle juice mixture over potatoes, and toss until evenly coated. Refrigerate until cooled, about 30 minutes.

Mix remaining tablespoon pickle juice, chopped pickles, remaining ½ tsp. salt, pepper, celery seed, mayo, sour cream, red onion and celery in a large bowl. Toss in cooled potatoes, cover, and refrigerate until well chilled, about 30 minutes. Gently stir in eggs, if using, just before serving.

Anniversary Weekend Day 1 (Saturday Morning)

We’re back from our fantastic anniversary weekend extravaganza. I’m going to do two long entries with both food and scenery pictures starting with Saturday since I was a moron and didn’t bring my camera with me Friday night. I’m still kicking myself about it since we had amazing pizza that was incredibly photogenic.

Saturday morning bright and early we drove into Lambertville for our anniversary breakfast at the Bed & Breakfast where we got married. Laurie, who is a fantastic cook, and her husband, Mark, greeted us with big hugs. Laurie starts every breakfast with fruit in some form and we lucked out with fresh, juicy cantaloupe:


… served with a fruit “salsa” made with finely diced banana, kiwi and strawberries. But the star of the breakfast (and the reason we chose to go Saturday instead of Sunday) was the pumpkin waffles with homemade apple cider syrup:


… which are out-of-this-world good. She only serves them at this time of year even though people clamor for them year-round.

After chatting with other guests about our wedding and saying goodbye to Laurie and Mark for another year we set out for a long walk. Our plan was to walk into Stockton, which is about 3 miles down the D&R Canal. It was a gorgeous, crystal-clear day, not too cold or too hot. Perfect for a long walk.


Along the way I took a ton of pictures of things that caught my eye, such as this rusting railroad car hidden amongst the trees:




…a farmhouse barn:



…train tracks leading to nowhere:



…and our shadows as we walked along the path:




Once we got into Stockton we crossed the bridge into Pennsylvania and stopped at Dilly’s, a roadside stand that has excellent burgers and onion rings. After all that walking we wanted a snack (well, I did, but SP’s a good sport so he got something, too).


You order at the counter and they give you a random playing card that acts as your number. Once your order is ready they’ll call out “three of diamonds”:


… and you pick up your food and take it to one of the picnic tables. I ordered a burger with raw onion, lettuce, tomato and mayo:


… which was perfectly charred and layered with fresh, crisp toppings. But the real star were the onion rings:



…which are crispy and hot, fresh from fryer, coated in a thin batter. These are just outstanding and worth the 6-mile roundtrip walk.



On our walk back to Lambertville I took even more scenery pictures. My favorite is this one with the bench and the two trees:




Once we got back to town we decided to stop at the farm and get pumpkins to finish decorating our front yard:


SP also wanted to carve pumpkins so we spent the afternoon on the front porch doing just that. The finished product:


...along with an ornamental pepper plant I couldn't resist buying.