The Sunday Dinner Burger

It's no secret that I love hamburgers (see my previous post) but sometimes you want the FEEL of a burger, but not really a burger. If that makes sense. It might not, so stick with me. Anyway, I also love chicken, and chicken makes a really tasty burger. The other night, though, I didn't really feel like making a regular chicken burger, and had a taste for something a bit different. What I came up with is a unique mishmash of a number of things, and the result is certainly greater than the sum of its parts.

In happier days

I started with an ordinary rotisserie chicken from Kroger. It was the "savory" variety, but I would imagine that you can use whichever flavor you'd like. I removed all of the meat and skin from the chicken and put it into my food processor. If you've never just picked up a rotisserie chicken and tore it apart, it's a very...visceral? experience. 

Along with the chicken, I put in about 1/2 of a bunch of green onions. If for nothing else, it would break up the color of the chicken. In actuality, it added a nice hint of onion flavor. After the chicken was done in the food processor, I started making a packet of generic stove top stuffing (chicken flavored). When it was finished, I had to let it cool in the fridge for a while. The way I was going to use it necessitated that.

While the stuffing cooled, I made a small pan of chicken gravy, using chicken bullion and corn starch. Again, nothing fancy, just very basic.

Chicken and stuffing

Now that the stuffing had cooled, I combined it with the ground up rotisserie chicken, and mixed until they were fully incorporated. This was going to be the first big test of what I was hoping would happen. I grabbed a handfull of the mixture and started to form it into a patty. It was a little soft at first, but tossing it between hands really kept it all together really well. I put the first patty into the skillet. I repeated this a few more times (even making a small one for Calvin!) added a bit of olive oil, and turned on the stove.

Meet Patty!

So part one of my experiment was a success- I was able to form the mixture into actual patties. Then came part two, and certainly the most important part- would they hold together during cooking? I wasn't sure that they would, since both parts were already cooked. Sure, raw chicken will hold it's form when cooked, but this wasn't raw. I held my breath as I flipped the first patty...

Hear me baby, hold together.

Success! Not only did it hold together, but it got a nice bit of burn on it! I was confident that this was going to work out. Then I added some cheese to the top, and began toasting the bun.

Adding the gravy

Once the patty was finished cooking and the cheese was melted, I placed it on the bun and drizzled some gravy over the top of it. I had originally wanted to top the burger with a couple of slices of fried potato, but decided against it for this go around. Next time, though.

Calvin's Mini-Meal

The "burger" was finished. It smelled as amazing as it looked. The smell reminded me of the kind of meal that you'd have on a Sunday evening with your family- chicken, stuffing, gravy...so I decided to call this the Sunday Dinner Burger. 

Did it pass the taste test? You be the judge!