I came up with this recipe on a Saturday afternoon when we were planning on grilling burgers AGAIN!

It is our Summer ‘thing’.

My husband likes burgers, my kids will eat them, and I like improvising with recipes to keep from being bored, so here goes:

Recipe for Blue Burgers

What You Need:

2 lbs. ground beef, or turkey
1 small onion, diced
1/8-1/4 C soy sauce
1/8-1/4 C Worcestershire sauce
1/4 C blue cheese crumbles
pinch of salt and pepper to taste
1 package mushrooms (about 1 handful sliced-I used baby portabellos)
balsamic vinegar
6-8 burger rolls or buns
lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mayo mustard, etc. for topping burgers

First, heat up your grill!

Combine the first 6 ingredients well.

Take about 1 T of meat mixture and form a small patty.

In a pan, heat a drizzle of olive oil over medium, heat and cook the mini patty until cooked through. Taste it to be sure your seasoning is correct.

If the patty does not taste seasoned, add more soy, Worcestershire, salt and pepper. Form the rest of the meat mixture into burger patties of your desired size. I made about 6 or 8.

Second, while the burgers are on the grill, use the same pan from your test burger, and heat it to medium.

Clean and slice the mushrooms and place in the heated pan until they begin to brown.

Drizzle over about 1 T of the vinegar-it will begin to evaporate, so add more if you like so that the mushrooms have some to soak up.

After a minute on the stove, turn off the heat and let the mushrooms sit. Season with a pinch of salt.

Third, assemble your burgers!

My husband and I love blue cheese, so we added some on top of the cooked patties after they were removed from the grill. For my children, though, since the cheese has a strong flavor, I did not add any extra on their burgers. In fact, they both ate their burgers well! No aversion to the hidden cheese in the patties. (It’s a nice way to ease picky eaters into trying new flavors.)

We added the standard burger fixings and I served it alongside a balsamic potato salad with chopped vegetables that I had in the fridge-one of those “Well, this is what I have so I will just use it,” recipes.

The potato salad recipe is as follows:

Balsamic Potato Salad:

8 medium potatoes, boiled to fork tender with skins on
1/2 C mayo
1/4 C apple balsamic vinegar
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 seedless cucumber, diced
(You could also throw in the typical celery and onion as well, but I was out!)

I chopped the potatoes and left the skins on for more fiber.

I pre-chopped the veggies nice and small so they would be ready to go.

Next I poured on the vinegar and mayo, added the veggies, and stirred it to combine.

Season with salt and pepper, then chill in the fridge.

I made this before starting the burgers so it could cool and the flavors could combine. Taste again when you pull it out to serve, because it may need more seasoning.

(A little secret-I used the same pot to boil the potatoes, then cook my mini burger ‘test’ patty, and finally to saute the glazed mushrooms. Less clean up is a good thing!)

This recipe is featured in A Complete Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms: Recipes and Meal Planning Tips. For all of the recipes and tips, click HERE.