In the health world, the burger often gets tossed around as the poster child for unhealthy food. You’ve heard it before in the stereotypical list of unhealthy foods: Burger and fries, pizza, soda, candy, ice cream, etc. Some of the things on that list are hard to argue with but both burgers and pizza can have healthy versions that are often just as tasty but without the guilt. We covered pizza in another blog (CLICK HERE), but today we’re going to talk about Healthy Burger Recipes!
The Bun
The first component of healthy burger recipes is the bun. In 90/10 we have some rules about bread that make it fairly simple to pick a healthy burger bun.
♦ It must be 100% whole grain – This means that it only uses whole grains and not any refined or enriched wheat. The front of the package will usually say “100% whole grain” or “100% whole wheat”. Also, in the ingredients, you should find the word “whole” in front of any grains. So, if the ingredients say “whole wheat flour”, that’s good. If they say “wheat flour”, that means it’s not 100% whole
♦ It should not contain High Fructose Corn Syrup
That’s pretty much it. Find hamburger buns that meet that criteria and you have the start of amazing healthy burger recipes. Here’s one brand that meets the criteria: Oroweat 100% Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns
Make Your Own
Of course, there are several ways to make your own hamburger buns for your healthy burger recipes. We even have a keto option!
The Meat
In this blog, we’ll just discuss the standard ground beef burger. We could go into various other options like turkey burgers and veggie burgers, but for the sake of these healthy burger recipes, we’ll just discuss the standard. In the recipe listing at the bottom, you’ll see other options.
To pick your ground beef for 90/10 Nutrition, you simply need ground burger that is 90% lean or leaner. You typically see 90/10, 93/7, or 96/4 as options. Any of these options would be “green tier” for us. Fattier options would be yellow tier and typically unnecessary.
In most cases, a simple burger patty does the job and the toppings take over from there. Sometimes, though, we’ll add a few things to the burger patty as well.
The Toppings
You can go traditional or you can go all out. Onions, pickles (watch for sugar), tomatoes, and lettuce are easy options. Mustard works great. Ketchup can be tricky as it usually has sugar in it. We usually use some Organicville ketchup or just go super easy on it.
Here are a couple of healthy burger recipes that take the burger to a whole new level.
Healthy Burger Recipes – Variations
If you’re looking for burgers that aren’t really burgers, we have a few fun options. These options use standard ground beef but mix it up by using wraps, waffles, or even pie crust.
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Will be trying some of these with ground chicken and turkey!
I forgot there were so many ways to have a burger! I want to try the Taco Burger