Rabbit Food for Lions
Turkey Burgers Garnished Chopped Roasted Shallot, Catalan Mushrooms and Maple Molasses Chipotle Ketchup

We hear “rabbit food” and think all that’s bad about dieting. Dull, lifeless, uninspiring. Not our thing — fitness and fine food should both enliven your experience of life, not deaden it. So the food Kevin and Russ cook, and the techniques and philosophy they share, turn standard rabbit food and make it fit for a lion. Read more about our cooking philosophy in the Second Helping Toolbox.

How many times have you decided to had a “cheat day” holiday weekend only to discover the foods you ate pre-diet tasted horrible, greasy and unappetizing? It turns out it’s cheat, in a sense – but less a “I’m going to treat myself, waistline be damned!” cheat and more “I just got suckered into eating calories that weren’t worth it, damn your eyes!” cheat. Maybe “scammed” might be a better word.

Good news is July 4 weekend, or any holiday, doesn’t have to be that way.

As always, this July 4 weekend we wanted to create a hamburger that we prepared on our terms, based on our beliefs — interesting and imaginative health food, calories that are worth it, highly versatile ingredients you can create more recipes from the following week, and a bit of improvisation.

So we devised a basic Turkey Burger recipe and added to it a number of high flavor accoutrements in chopped roasted shallot, Catalan mushrooms and a Maple Molasses Chipotle Ketchup.

The beauty of this dish is its modular nature. Together, the various components – the ketchup, shallot, mushrooms and burger – make an amazing meal. If you try this for Saturday, we suggest preparing everything but the burgers on Friday so during July 4 parties you only need worry about the burgers.

But each recipe also works separately, and will surprise and impress guests nonetheless. The sweet-spicy ketchup, which is almost a barbecue sauce, will perk up a standard burger. The same with the mushrooms, or substituting roughly chopped Shallot (raw or roasted) for the more conventional onion.

And that’s the curious trick to cooking Rabbit Food for Lions style. If you follow these recipes verbatim, you’re guests will be shocked. Most people don’t understand health food can look and taste like this. But they’ll be equally surprised and delighted by having a standard meal with a few added surprises a perks – the nuanced taste of shallot instead of an onion, or highly-seasoned mushrooms.

These recipes have cooking wisdom to impart, hiding just below the ingredient lists and procedures. So let’s spell them out:

Potency: the Ultimate Portion Control

Yes, much maple syrup and molasses goes into our ketchup recipe. That does mean sugar. But here’s the thing – ketchup, if you check, has ample sugar already, so you’re no worse off than if you grabbed a supermarket bottle. More importantly – a little goes a long way.

The easiest disguise for portion control is preparing potential “problem foods” with so much flavor that your pallet can only handle a very small amount. Extremely strong flavors work beautifully in small amounts but ruin a dish in larger quantities. It’s a useful trick for holiday meals – it’s health-food-by-way-of-thinking-like-a-foodie.

Adding Volume: Wingman for the Ultimate Portion Control

Between the mushroom topping and the oats and whole wheat panko crumbs in the burger recipe, this is a hearty burger. Intense flavor is one method to keep portion sizes reasonable — adding volume and heartiness to otherwise light meals is another. It’s not that difficult to eat multiple burgers or hot dogs because despite the fat content, those dishes are not often dense foods (although they can be).

The added whole grains to the burger, and the volume of mushrooms fools your stomach into thinking it’s eating more than it actually is. And culinarily speaking, these add another nuance and flavor note to the dish. Both in weight loss and culinary terms, everyone wins.

Versatility

The Catalan mushrooms function like a condiment unto themselves. Endlessly useful for leftover-fodder, these can be mixed with rice, added to flatbread, health-oriented pizzas/calzones/stromboli, used as a salad condiment, or function as the main attraction in a sandwich. The ketchup makes a thoughtful gift, but keep some around. Believe or not, this ketchup does wonders with hearty fish such as salmon, swordfish, tuna steaks or tuna burgers.

Chunky or Blended?

Our ketchup cooks for so long that it isn’t particularly chunky. But if you have finicky eaters who want ketchup to look like it came out of a Heinz bottle, use an immersion blender (the stick-like, handheld type). It also never hurts to puree half the ketchup and leave the rest chunky, as both have advantages for particular dishes.

Use what you have

Mixing mushrooms is a casual affair – we often use button mushrooms for volume and spike it with amounts of more exotic mushrooms to lend flavor. Chefs do this to “pad” mushroom recipes to keep food costs low. Talk about a cheat, huh? But for money and waist-conscious cooks, it’s a clever trick.

The same applies to using dry sherry — if there isn’t any try red wine or whatever alcohol is on hand. This will alter the flavor slightly, so you might have to adjust to that, again, with what you have on hand. This is how you become a more confident, creative cook — scarcity!

Round out the meal

We stuck to the burger this column, but accompaniments to this could include the following: sweet potato French fries or sweet potato chips, roasted corn drizzled with thyme oil instead of butter, a mixed bean salad, or a succotash or hash (see our recipe here).

A sweet finish could be fruit salad mixed with Greek yogurt and spiked with honey or a coconut sorbet garnished with blueberry and strawberries if you really need the “July 4 desserts must have red, white and blue!” tradition maintained.

A few reminders on cooking with ground turkey

Turkey burgers have become more popular in recent years – bad ones have as many (if not more) calories than a standard beef burger, and the worst ones taste like cardboard. Because turkey has so little inherent fat, always remember that cooking with it demands you add ingredients to it that increase its moisture. You don’t have to do much with beef because the fat keeps it moist. So if you take out the fat, you need to put other flavors in.

In this recipe’s example, ingredients we used to flavor (vinegar, mustard, egg whites) lend moisture and flavor. We borrowed a trick from most meatball recipes and added egg whites and whole wheat panko crumbs (We told you they’d be useful!)

Calatan Mushrooms

• 2 Pints of Any Combination of Mushrooms: Button, Shitaki, Oyster, Cremini /Portalbella

• 3 Tablespoons Olive Oil, Divided

• 2 Tablespoons Spanish Seasoning

• 5 Roasted Garlic Cloves, Mashed

• 1/2 Cup Dry Sherry (Substitutions: Red Wine, Sweet Vermouth)

• 1 Teaspoon Sea Salt

• 2 Tablespoons Sherry Vinegar or Balsamic Vinegar

• Pinch-1 Teaspoon Black Pepper

• 1 Tablespoon Worschestshire Sauce

• 3-4 Springs Fresh Thyme Leaves, Chopped

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat in nonstick pan until oil just begins to smoke. Add mushrooms, and sauté until mushrooms release liquid. Add Spanish spice and roasted garlic. Cook until spices become aromatic. Then add vinegar, Worschestshire, dry sherry. Continue to cook until liquids is almost absorbed into the mushrooms. Add olive oil and thyme and remove from heat.
Stove method | Add all ingredients into a roasting pan, add a bay leaf and 2 tablespoons chicken broth, olive oil or water. Roast at 375-400 F until mushrooms are golden brown. Check the mixture frequently during the cooking, adding additional liquid to prevent burning.

Kevin DeMarco is a personal trainer and personal chef in North Carolina. He and Russ Lane are on a mission to bring invigorating health food to home kitchens, and use cooking as a way to redefine self-defeating relationships with food. Read more about our cooking philosophy, and learn more about us at the Team Second Helping page.