How To Make Healthier Burgers

BY Chef K.T. Murphy January 23, 2021

by Chef Murph K.T.

How to make a healthy burger to satisfy your burger craving ? Nowadays, almost everyone is concerned about eating healthier and understandably so. And when it comes to food popularity, there’s not a lot that is more well-known that the burger.It comes in many shape and sizes and all of them taste great. But, with being healthy in mind, what is the best choice?Is it chicken, turkey or the ever popular beef?

When it comes to these three, it is calorie count and fat content that will make the most significant difference when it comes to good health and weight management.

Fat And Calorie Comparison Based On 8 Ounce Portion

  • Beef – 349 calories
  • Chicken – 275 calories
  • Turkey – 238 calories

Fat Content

  • Beef – 17 grams
  • Chicken – 6 grams
  • Turkey – 4 grams

Protein

  • Beef – 46 grams
  • Chicken – 51 grams
  • Turkey – 39 grams

With all these three to consider, it looks like chicken and turkey is a wiser choice for making healthy burgers. The preparation of the meat also matters. Grilling or broiling in a way where the fat drips away from the meat is optimal, such as, on a BBQ grill or in the oven broiler.Also, adding crumbled tofu to the ground meat mixture will make it retain moisture, which can make a big difference when using extra lean beef that tends to dry out when it is cooked because it has little fat content.

Load Up On Veggies

Including more veggies in your burger like tomatoes, lettuce, onion, grilled mushrooms, avocado and even cucumbers allows you to eat less of the meat, but, still get full on a wide variety of low calorie, healthy and zero fat vegetables.

The Bun

Now that we got the patties covered, let’s go to the kind of bread used on burgers. It will either be white or whole wheat bread. Whole wheat bread is a lot healthier than white bread since it has eight times the fiber and reduces one’s risk of heart disease by 20%. That is no surprise since up to 30 nutrients are removed is the refining process of white flour.

Lettuce Wraps

For those looking to lose weight, and eat less bread carbs, wrapping the burger in lettuce is a great option.

Dressings

Another important part of a burger is the dressing.

Now even here, there seems to be a debate between real or low calorie mayonnaises. In this one, conventional thinking says low calorie is healthier since it has less calories. That may be true, but, low calorie versions also contain some ingredients that are not found in real mayo.

Light mayo contains “modified” corn starch, xanthum gum, lime peel for thickeners, and phosphoric acid. Considering that there is not a big difference in calorie count anyway, real mayo has 40 calories while low calorie has 35, using real mayo is just healthier since it is mostly made from natural ingredients.A better option is to choose Canola Oil mayo that has no saturated fat.Also, when using 1000 Island dressing, you can cut the fat by choosing a fat free version readily available in stores.

Healthy Cheese Choices

Choose a skim cheese product to further lower the fat content of the burger, or skip the cheese altogether..

Create and enjoy

Chef Murph

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