SNEAKY BURGERS WITH HIDDEN VEGGIES

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In these sneaky burgers with hidden veggies I pack in a whole bunch of healthy goodness. They taste so good my husband doesn’t even know they’re full of vegetables!!

There’s no doubt about it – kids are expert vegetable detectives. They can’t find a shoe sitting right in front of them, but give them a meal with a few itsy bitsy diced onions, and somehow they’re Sherlock Holmes! This burger recipe hides the veggies SO well your kids will never find them. They’ll blissfully go about eating their meal, never knowing that they are building strong, healthy bodies and immune systems. 

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SNEAKY BURGER WITH HIDDEN VEGGIES VIDEO

HOW TO MAKE SNEAKY BURGERS WITH HIDDEN VEGGIES

This is a dump and mix recipe. You simply put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix it up. Here are the ingredients:

• 1 to 1 1/3 pounds ground beef
• 2 white mushrooms – diced small
• 1 jar baby food
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp ground mustard
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• about 8 twists of fresh ground black pepper (or about 1/4 to 1/2 tsp)
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• 1/8 cup BBQ sauce

I get my organic ground beef at Costco, so that’s why it is a 1 1/3 pound package. (Tip: Costco has an amazing meat selection for fantastic prices.) You can use the 1 pound package from the grocery store without a problem though.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

Don’t worry about getting the mushrooms extremely small. They shrink like CRAZY when you cook them because they contain so much water, so they’ll shrink up and disappear. If you aren’t a big fan of mushrooms yourself, I promise you won’t even know they’re in there. Besides, mushrooms are full of protein and fiber, as well as B vitamins and vitamin D just to name a few. There’s good reason to sneak them into your burgers.

For the baby food, most flavors work well with this. This time I used apple, kiwi & spinach from Beechnut. Savory or sweet will do just fine, so feel free to throw in what you have in the cabinet. The only thing I wouldn’t recommend is something with a very distinctive flavor such as banana, because it may power through the other ingredients.

For breadcrumbs, I make my own. Right now I have bread I made from sourdough starter that came out too dense. It didn’t taste very good, so it ended up staling on the counter. Instead of throwing it out, I pulsed it in my mini Cuisinart food processor and threw it in the freezer. I take them out and use them whenever I need bread crumbs (no thawing necessary), and I know they don’t contain any junk ingredients.

GLUTEN FREE/SUGAR FREE

If gluten is a concern for you, simply omit the breadcrumbs. Your burgers may be a little more difficult to handle while you’re cooking them, but once you get ’em cooked they’ll be just as good.

If you prefer to make the recipe sugar free, don’t hesitate to omit the BBQ sauce. I’ve been making my burgers this way for years and the BBQ sauce is a recent addition. They’ll be plenty tasty without it!!

FORM YOUR HIDDEN VEGGIE BURGERS

Mix it all up with your hands. Don’t overmix, because it could make the cooked burgers a little tough.

Next it’s time to form your burger patties. You could get fancy and use a burger press, but I keep it simple and just use my hands. First I like to form balls right in the mixing bowl so I can divide up the meat how I want it. I normally do larger patties for adults, and smaller ones for the kids.

Next it’s time to press the meat into patties. Keep in mind that the meat will shrink up on the grill, so you will want to make them wider than you want your finished products to be.

Grill as you would any burger patty. The exact time will depend on how many patties you made with your meat (because the size will vary). Try to only flip them once to get nice grill marks.

Top with cheese if you desire. You can put them on buns with all the fixins’. Or skip the extra carbs (and added work) as I did, and serve them with some ketchup and a side dish (I did steamed broccoli with butter and garlic salt).

I had a couple of very satisfied customers. Both of my girls ate every last bit of burger that I served them tonight!! Hidden veggies and all. 😉 And don’t be fooled by my 4 year old eating broccoli. Getting her to eat vegetables has been a long fought battle, and broccoli and peas are pretty much the only ones she will eat willingly right now. Little does she know she also had mushrooms and spinach tonight!

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Cuisinart Mini Prep Food Processor
Burger Press

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Thanks for stopping by!!

XO,
Morgan
The Cheeky Homemaker

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