- [Female Narrator] Sara's Weeknight Meals is made possible by Sunsweet and by, - Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It was starting when I was child with my grandmother doing fresh pasta, and now I transmit it to all the guests is something made specially for them.

- [Female Narrator] Oceania Cruises, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(calm music) - [Female Narrator 2] ZWILLING, makers of Fresh and Save, the vacuum food storage system.

One of the ways ZWILLING has been helping cooks do it all in the kitchen for 290 years.

The ZWILLING family of cookware is proud to support Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(calm music) - Sun's out, buns out.

Nothing says summer like a burger grilled outside and nestled in a bun or my version of this New England classic.

My lobster roll in a shrimp suit.

Delicious.

That's right.

Replacing shrimp for lobster means you can save money and enjoy this classic anywhere.

Next up.

Maybe it's cause I'm small or maybe it's just cause I don't like to eat a lot of meat at one fell swoop.

I love a slider.

This one's made a pork, loaded with crunchy veggies, and slathered with a cilantro mayo.

(meat sizzling) Mm.

That's darn tasty.

Maybe you're looking for a leaner burger.

Turkey burgers are a healthy alternative, but they tend to have the texture of cardboard.

How do you get around that?

Vegetables are my secret.

Today, I'm making turkey spinach burgers.

Does that look like a lean, depressing burger?

I don't think so.

That's today on Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(upbeat music) You probably didn't know there's two different kinds of lobster rolls.

Right here, we have the lobster roll from Maine.

The one you're probably familiar with, mayonnaise, celery, or cucumber, and lobster, of course.

Over here, we have the Connecticut version.

What makes this one different?

This one is served warm and usually with just, you know, melted butter.

My family likes to put brown, hot brown butter on top.

Delicious.

Today, I'm gonna make the Maine version of a lobster roll, however, a much cheaper version with shrimp.

Let's get started with the crunchy part.

Traditional lobster roll, I'm going to keep calling it that, but I mean my shrimp roll, has celery in it.

I'm gonna use, instead, some cucumber.

I just prefer cucumber and so does my daughter.

As a matter of fact, she wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole.

I've chopped up, this is about a four ounces, a scant cup, of that seed, seedless cucumber, although, there are seeds in there, but they're edible.

I'm gonna salt them.

It just, you don't have to, not absolutely necessary, but it pulls out some of the liquid so that this doesn't water down your lobster salad later on, and also flavors the cucumbers, which is wonderful.

So I've just got 'em in a strainer.

I'm gonna put a little salt on, toss 'em up, and then park 'em for about 10 minutes.

And you will be surprised how much liquid comes out.

So now, we're gonna talk about shrimp.

I'm gonna line up the shrimp like Rockettes on a cutting board and do one action at a time.

So first, I peel them and I'm gonna save the peels in this container here, glass container with this lid, and you can suck out all the air.

The idea is to save the shrimp shells for later on to make a shrimp stock.

Fantastic.

Now that we've got the shells off, I'm gonna lay them all flat, keep them lined up like the Rockettes and run the knife down the backside of the C curve, one after another, because what's in that outside of the C curve is the intestine of the shrimp.

And perhaps the shrimp had dinner last night and perhaps there's a little shrimp poop in there.

We wanna get rid of the shrimp poop.

Okay, now let me just explain one thing.

So here's the C of the shrimp, right?

You're taking the vein that's on the outside, the intestine, that little strip.

There's one that goes on the inside.

Don't worry about that.

That's the nervous system or something.

It's the outside one you wanna take.

I tell you this cause my daughter one time was making dinner for her boyfriend and she had to do, like, two pounds of shrimp and she took both sides out.

Oh my God.

You know, two hours later, she started cooking dinner.

Okay, now I'm gonna go over to the sink and wash out that thing.

Okay, some cold water.

(water running) Here it is.

You see?

We're just rinsing it out.

If you tried take it out with a paring knife, you get it all over your fingers.

Your fingers get sticky.

This is so much easier.

(water running) So I've got a big pot of water here.

There's about three quarts in there and I'm gonna add some salt.

So I'm gonna add about a tablespoon.

(rock music) Okay, that looks like it's boiling.

So I'm gonna add the shrimp (rock music) and we're gonna watch it to make sure it doesn't come back to a full boil.

Just like any other protein, you don't really wanna boil it because whenever you boil protein, it just gets tough.

You can see that it's already turning color.

It takes almost no time at all.

So I'm gonna take one out right now and show you what it looks like inside.

I'm gonna cut it in half because the idea is that we want it to not be translucent in the center.

So I'm just gonna turn that off.

Let it sit for 10 seconds.

We're gonna stop the cooking by putting it in ice water.

(rock music) The shrimp is now gonna stay in here for about 10 minutes, cooling off, and I'm gonna start working on the sauce.

Now, for the sauce, I'm gonna zest my lemon to get about a teaspoon of zest.

Then, I'm gonna cut a wedge out of the lemon to add about a teaspoon of juice to our sauce.

Good point to remember, zest the lemon first and then juice it.

I'm gonna pick some of these chives here and then, mince them into about two tablespoons.

(cheerful music) Then, I'm gonna add a half cup of store-bought mayonnaise and stir it really well.

(cheerful music) So first, the cucumbers are going in.

Yep, they gave off quite a bit of water.

I think these shrimp are cool enough now.

I'm gonna lift 'em out and put them on some paper towels and pat them dry.

(cheerful music) And then, because they're rather large, I'm gonna cut 'em either in half or in thirds.

(cheerful music) And boom, we're done.

Now, you saw me make that from start to finish.

Okay, let me just stir it up.

(cheerful music) Oh, this looks so good.

Wow.

Okay, bun time.

We have two traditional buns here.

This is the old hot dog, the one you get at the ballpark, and this is the new England version of a hot dog bun.

This is what we want.

Why?

Because it's exposed on the side.

So when we go to saute it in butter, (slurping sound) Ooh, it absorbs all that butter.

The other difference is where the split is that you put the food, but don't worry, if you can't get the New England style, you can buy the regular and just stand 'em up like this and cut down either side to expose the edges.

I'm going to pop some butter in here.

(butter sizzling) When the foam was just starting to subside, you know it's hot enough and you can get those buns in.

(butter sizzling) All right, now while that is browning, I'm just gonna tidy up a little bit.

(calm music) Okay, I think these guys are ready.

Nicely browned on both sides.

It's time to eat our shrimp rolls.

All right.

Now it's very important to make sure these are completely full cause they hold, you know, abundance.

Add an extra spritz of the chives.

(paper crinkling) We're giving each person their own little paper holder.

(calm music) Nothing says summer to me like a lobster roll.

And this looks every bit as yummy as the one you'd be sitting on the coast of Maine at a dock eating.

So there you have it.

My lobster roll in a shrimp suit.

(calm music) (upbeat music) Every fan of a big burger is definitely a fan of a small burger, also known as a slider, especially me.

Maybe it's cause I'm small or maybe it's just cause I don't like to eat a lot of meat at one fell swoop.

I love a slider.

So we are gonna be making some Asian pork sliders here and they're very exciting.

But one of the issues you have when you're working with pork, cause it's very lean, is that you have to add something to provide moisture.

So I'm gonna do it with vegetables and I'm starting here with Napa cabbage.

Napa or even you could use Savoy, is another great cabbage.

And in this particular recipe, you'll, you won't even taste it really.

It's just gonna make the hamburgers moist.

And then, we've got a little bit of red pepper.

This is a quarter of a large pepper, about a quarter of a cup minced.

And then, we have our scallion and this is for flavor as well as moisture.

Anytime you're working with lean meat, add vegetables to the mix when you make the burger and it will be delicious and moist.

I'm gonna just mince up a garlic clove.

(knife slapping) (rock music) Add a little bit of salt.

So some of the salt that I was gonna add to the burger, I'll add to the garlic instead to keep it from sticking.

(knife chopping) Okay, and then we're gonna do some ginger.

I'm just gonna grate it.

You need about an inch of ginger, which means about a teaspoon of ginger, fresh ginger root.

(ginger grating) Boy, I love the aroma that comes off of this.

(ginger grating) (slapping) I think that looks good.

And last but not least, some fresh basil.

We're gonna start with about, I don't know, we're gonna end up with two tablespoons of basil.

I find that when I'm chopping fresh herbs, they reduce in half.

So I'm taking the bigger leaves cause they're easier to chiffonade.

Chiffonade just means shred.

(rock music) You line 'em up like a deck of cards.

This is what you do with big herbs, you know, big-leafed herbs.

And then you roll it up tightly like a cigar and then just shred it.

(knife chopping) (rock music) I think that looks good.

(knife scraping) Now, our flavorings.

So just a little bit of salt.

I added some salt to the garlic.

We wanna add a half a teaspoon total.

So since I already added some to the garlic, I'm gonna just skimp there.

Then, we want two teaspoons of soy sauce.

And you're wondering, why am I adding both soy sauce and salt?

They just each provide a different salinity.

But also, in the case of soy sauce, it provides, sort of, a depth of flavor as well.

Eighth of a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil.

A little goes a very, very long way.

It's intense.

So here's all our flavorings and this is what's gonna make the burger so moist.

So let me go get the star of the show, which is the ground pork.

And we will just toss it in there and mix it up.

(door rattling) (door closing) (paper crinkling) If you don't eat or like pork, you can use any meat that makes you happy.

I have a bowl of water here I'm gonna use too to shape my little burgers.

It's just easier when your hands aren't all sticky.

And we're only gonna shape eight because we're eating several appetizers for dinner.

So you don't need a ton of meat.

(meat squishing) (rock music) That's pretty well mixed.

You don't wanna over mix it.

I'm gonna divide it roughly into quarters.

And then, each quarter, I'm gonna make two little burgers out of, cause we want eight burgers.

So, the first one I'm gonna do without water.

I'm gonna get 'em all fixed and then I will put them in together so they all cook at the same time.

But sometimes I'm terrible at proportions.

So that's why, when I'm measuring things out, I like to divide it up so I've got an idea of, and you're gonna have reasonably good success.

Dip it again in the water.

See, this is really very quick.

(calm music) (bowls clanging) Okay.

They're ready to go.

I'm gonna pop them in the pan.

(meat sizzling) And we're cooking these in flavorless vegetable oil (meat sizzling) for about three minutes a side.

(meat sizzling) They're very colorful too.

Although by the time they're cooked, they're not gonna be quite as colorful as they are right now.

(meat sizzling) Now, that's not all.

I always like to have a little something extra.

So I'm gonna make some cilantro mayonnaise and we're gonna just chop up some fresh cilantro, (meat sizzling) (calm music) great alternatives are basil and mint.

I've got a quarter cup of mayonnaise in there, you could use the light mayonnaise if you wanted, or you could use yogurt, the Greek yogurt's really thick.

(meat sizzling) (calm music) And just a little bit of lime juice, prepared mayonnaise and there are some good brands out there, very good brands, but it tends to be very sweet.

So I almost always add a little bit of acid.

Eh, about a teaspoon, but I'll taste it.

(meat sizzling) (calm music) (spoon clanging) (calm music) Mm, that's darn tasty.

Okay, I think they're ready to turn.

We're using this fish spatula.

I like it cause it's curved.

This is a non-stick pan, so you've got to be careful not to scratch it.

(meat sizzling) All right, we're gonna give them another three minutes on this side.

Just make sure they're completely cooked at that point cause this is raw pork.

And then, we're gonna assemble our little, mini burgers.

Okay, time to assemble.

Look at how lovely they look and they're nice and firm, which is what you want.

So I'm gonna put a little bit of mayonnaise on each one of these.

These are our mini buns.

You could use mini pitas.

If you can't find mini anything, you can take a little cutter like this into a normal hamburger roll and just cut them out and then save the crumbs, cause you're not gonna use the whole big bun, to make breadcrumbs, which you can then store in the freezer.

We don't wanna waste anything.

So I'll just put this on the bottom.

(calm music) Okay.

Now I've made eight, which is for a family of four, but, certainly, you can up the amounts for a whole big party and do many, many, many of them.

You could shape them ahead of time and then just saute them at the last minute.

The main point is you can't eat just one.

So make sure you have at least two to three per person.

There you have it.

My mini, Asian pork sliders.

(rock music) What makes beef burgers so delicious?

Fat, of course.

Now, turkey burgers are a healthy alternative, but they tend to have the texture of cardboard.

How do you get around that?

Vegetables are my secret.

Today, I'm making turkey spinach burgers.

(rock music) So I gotta get my onions going here.

I got my beautiful spinach.

We need about a half a cup of sauteed onions.

And if you only add one vegetable to give this moisture to turkey, let it be the onion.

When you saute it, it just adds this wonderful depth of flavor and moisture.

We're gonna get it in there with a little bit of olive oil.

(knife chopping) We are gonna use some fat, even though this is our lean turkey burger.

Okay.

So medium low for about 10 minutes until it gets nice and golden.

Okay, a little stir, a little pinch of salt and pepper.

(calm music) (pepper grinding) Okay.

I'm gonna let that go for 10 minutes.

(calm music) (plastic knocking) (onion sizzling) Now, see that nice color?

That's what I'm looking for.

In goes our spinach.

We need five ounces and I'm gonna really crank up the heat here cause we want to get this shrinking, cooking, wilting fast without sweating and giving up too much liquid and it will do it.

You don't need any liquid to cook spinach.

I love spinach.

(spinach sizzling) All right.

(spinach sizzling) Again, I'm gonna add a little pinch of salt.

You wanna flavor as you go.

You don't wanna wait til the end.

(spinach sizzling) Give this one more second.

You don't wanna add hot vegetables to ground meat because it's gonna heat up the inside before the burger cooks and we don't want to set up a bad temperature situation for bacteria reasons.

So what I'm gonna do is quick chill this just throw it in the fridge until it comes, you know, it gets pretty cool.

And then, we can add the rest of the turkey ingredients.

Okay.

(bowl clattering) Okay, I'm gonna, I'll work on my sauce while this cools off.

(bowl clattering) So the sauce is a really simple sauce.

It's part yogurt, part mayonnaise.

And we're using yogurt because we want to keep it leaner.

You could use low-fat mayonnaise.

Don't use no fat mayonnaise.

No fat mayonnaise has no flavor.

Boring.

And you can do it with all yogurt.

I like the Greek yogurt.

It's fantastic.

So about a quarter cup of each and then we're gonna spike it up with some other ingredients.

(spoon clattering) And then, these things called pepperoncini.

You find them in Greek salads.

And we're going to chop two of these guys.

You're gonna need about two tablespoons.

You could add more.

I'm gonna add some of their juice too.

You can remove the seeds, which I will do very quickly.

Now, this sauce that I'm making is a wonderful sauce for all sorts of things.

It's great on sandwiches.

It'd be wonderful with sauteed shrimp.

I just like it cause I like the slight heat.

These aren't terribly hot, but they give it a kick.

(knife sliding) We're gonna move on to the garlic and just one clove, (knife chopping) and some lemon juice, a couple of teaspoons, one to two.

(knife slicing) I'm just gonna eyeball it here.

Let me get the rest of my ingredients.

We have a few other things to add to the turkey.

Now, when you go to buy ground turkey in the supermarket, you can get white meat.

You can get dark meat.

Obviously, white meat is the leanest of all of them.

Or you could get a mix and there's many different percentages of fat.

And normally, I wouldn't recommend going with a hundred percent white meat turkey ground, cause it's very dry.

But with all these vegetables and things I'm adding, you could do that if you really want to go lean, lean, lean, and then we're gonna also add, to the turkey, some oregano and some feta.

Let me just chop the oregano.

And then I know my spinach onion mixture will be ready.

So oregano is a wonderful herb that's used in Greek cooking.

Another herb that would go nicely in here would be some rosemary.

And certainly, thyme would be nice with turkey too.

I'm gonna pick about two tablespoons of oregano.

We're using a grill pan.

You could do this on an outside grill.

It'd be great on an outside grill.

(knife chopping) Okay.

(knife clanging) And let me get my cooled mixture.

Yes, that is wonderfully cool.

Okay, all the turkey goes in.

(paper crinkling) Since we have, I'm gonna move this down here.

Since we have feta going in, I'm not gonna add much salt, just a tiny bit, because as we all know, this is three ounces of feta.

Feta is rather salty.

It's a wonderful goat or sheep's milk cheese.

I've never met a feta I didn't like, so there goes my oregano and my feta and a little bit of salt.

And then I'm gonna mix this with my hands because that's really the best tool to mix any burger with, but you don't wanna mix them too much because they will then be very dense and we don't want it to be dense, we want it to be, you know, light on the inside.

Doesn't that look beautiful?

I'm gonna shape these two and get 'em in.

That looks pretty good.

And it's okay to have big chunks of feta in there.

They sort of melt and because we added all the vegetables, it seems that much more substantial.

(slapping meat) So we've got to make sure that we don't turn it till it's ready to be turned.

People make mistake when they're cooking burgers of putting it into the pan and then nudging it, nudging it, nudging it, nudging it.

I'm gonna have to hose off cause I've got to use my olive oil spray.

(water splashing) (water running) Okie dokie.

(calm music) You can get these to put the oil in that don't have any, anything else in there.

It's just straight olive oil.

(meat sizzling) I'm gonna oil the second side while it's cooking.

(meat sizzling) All right.

So now, we're gonna go with six minutes a side and we wanna cook it well-done because it's turkey.

(meat sizzling) (calm music) So let me get these guys off.

We've got whole wheat buns cause we're being healthy.

We lather it up on both sides with our delicious sauce.

And then, on goes our burger.

You can grill these buns if you want.

That would be nice.

Do you know, it would be great to serve this also on pita.

And that would be sort of in the whole theme.

You'd need big pitas for that.

I'm getting so excited.

Does that look like a lean, depressing burger?

I don't think so.

I'm gonna go down and have it.

(paper crinkling) So wow.

I cannot wait to dig into this.

I mean yikes, who doesn't love a burger and occasionally, isn't it nice to have a burger that's slightly healthier?

That's slightly lower in calories?

Like my turkey burger here.

Thank you for joining me.

I'm Sara Moulton.

I'll see you next time for more of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(calm music) Mm.

For recipes, videos, and more go to our website saramoulton.com.

- [Female Narrator] Sara's Weeknight meals is made possible by Sunsweet and by, - Cooking is the first kind of love you know.

It was starting when I was child with my grandmother doing fresh pasta.

And now, I transmit it to all the guests is something made specially for them.

- [Female Narrator] Oceania cruises, proud sponsor of Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(cheerful music) - [Female Narrator 2] ZWILLING, makers of Fresh and Save, the vacuum food storage system.

One of the ways ZWILLING has been helping cooks do it all in the kitchen for 290 years.

The ZWILLING family of cookware is proud to support Sara's Weeknight Meals.

(calm music)