Monday, September 8, 2014

Easy Taco Burgers w/ Chipotle Cheddar Cheese on Sesame Seed Buns - Simple & Low Carb

This evening I was in the mood for burgers, but I was also in the mood for tacos...so I decided to have both! I made Taco Burgers by mixing ground beef with my homemade taco seasoning, salsa and shredded sharp cheddar cheese. I topped the burgers with a new type of cheddar cheese I found at Sprouts this past weekend...Chipotle Cheddar made by Finlandia. These burgers would also be great using ground chicken, too (Chris).  :-)

I started my dinner prep by mixing up a quick batch of my Sesame Seed Buns. While the buns were baking, I made the burgers so hubby could grill them when he got home. They turned out amazing. I topped each burger with a slice of the Chipotle Cheddar Cheese and had hoped to add sliced avocado as well, but both avocados I picked up this weekend were bad inside so I skipped it. The burgers were packed with flavor and were nice and moist with the addition of salsa and cheese inside. I've made "Mexican Meatloaf" for years now using taco seasoning, but have never added into burgers and I don't know what took me so long to do so! 

When my sons were over for dinner last night, I made a batch of my Chocolate Chip Cookies and just baked 1 dozen cookies for them last night and refrigerated the remaining dough. I wanted to be able to bake small batches of fresh hot cookies as I wanted throughout the week. Since my oven was already heated to bake my Sesame Seed Buns, I went ahead and popped a small batch of 8 cookies into the oven which will last me for a few days. I love making up the dough ahead of time and just baking the cookies as I want them. 

What could be better for a Monday night dinner than burgers on BUNS and cookies...it's a low carb lovers delight! I snapped a few photos below and included my easy peasy burger recipe. Enjoy!








Easy Taco Burgers

Ingredients:

1 to 1-1/4 pounds ground beef
Taco Seasoning:
    2 teaspoons chili powder
    1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
    1/4 teaspoon onion powder
    1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or to taste)
    1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
    1/4 teaspoon paprika
    1 teaspoon ground cumin
    1/2 teaspoon sea salt
    1 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 cup salsa
1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Form into 3 to 4 patties. Grill or pan fry to desired doneness. 


            

6 comments:

CyberSis said...

Hi GGC,

Love these burgers! I've actually made them before. :-) We love the mini meatloaves and a couple of weeks ago we "translated" them into burgers.

I'm playing "catch-up" tonight. We had a horrible storm last Thursday which knocked our power out for almost 4 days! We ran a generator to keep the fridge and freezer running and that's about it. No cooking on the stove or baking. We cooked *very* simple meals on the gas grill. I should have gotten one of those grill mats to keep the soot off of the cookware ... live and learn! Thank goodness we had cool & pleasant weather during the outage ... low 70's in the daytime and 60's at night, so that was a real "silver lining" in the whole ordeal! The power came back on early this a.m. so things are getting back to what passes for normal.

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi CyberSis,

I absolutely CAN'T imagine 4 days without power. Thankfully you had a generator to keep you from losing your food in the fridge and freezer!!!

You are right about being lucky you had such great weather, too. A little one way and you would have been sweating bullets with summer heat...a little the other way and you would have been cold and miserable. I've never had power out that long before. We don't have a generator so we would lose everything. I'm glad you are back in business with power again and feel special that you welcomed your power returning with MY power bagels! That must have been some kind of storm. Glad you are okay! :-)

CyberSis said...

Hi GGC,

Thanks for the well-wishes. Of the 312,000 customers without power, there are still a few that have yet to be restored! And more severe storms due this afternoon/evening. It's raining right now, but so far, so good ... no thunder and lightening or high winds yet, but they have been predicted. Maybe the weatherman will be wrong this time. After all, lightening never strikes the same place twice, right? :-)

You mentioned avocados in your post. We've had terrible luck with them lately ... especially at Costco. We usually buy 3 bags at a time. The quality has been very spotty. This last time we cut into a couple that were completely brown and yucky inside so we took all 3 bags back to the store. We've been buying them 1 or 2 individual avocados at a time from the local grocery and have had better luck. I guess we'll forget Costco's for a while, but I really miss our avocado-a-day! Costco got the avo oil in just in time. I've been using that for my salad and whatever else. It's quite nice and I like it.

Hope you're doing well and keeping ahead of the weather ... and hope that Spike is doing well, too! :-)

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi CyberSis,

Thanks! Keeping my fingers crossed for you through your next batch of storms. We have a few spooky looking clouds over us this evening and there is rain in our forecast for the next several days (just what we need...more humidity and more mosquitoes). But, knock on wood, we haven't lost power like you have, so I won't complain. I had stopped buying the avocados at Costco too because we were getting too many bad ones, so I was disappointed when the 2 I bought at the grocery store were brown inside too. Maybe there is a general problem with the avocado crops. Spike seems to be better...thank you! :-)

CyberSis said...

Hi GGC,

Avocado Update: After giving them a "rest" for a little while, we picked up some Costco ones this week. So far we've had 3 and they've been mostly fine (one of the 3 had a small brown blob in it, but it was isolated and easily removed.) These were Hass avocados from Mexico ... I'm cautiously optimistic that just *maybe* they are starting to get straightened out. The ones we were having the most trouble with were the "interim" ones from Peru.

Gourmet Girl Cooks said...

Hi CyberSis,

Good news about the avocados! I looked at them last week (from Peru)and up close you could see black spots on the outside so I passed on them. I didn't even look at them today. I'll be sure to check them out when I go next week! :-)