Salmon Burgers and Rosemary Fries

This weekend was a lot of fun, but full of driving. We drove to Houston to see the Bears in the Sweet Sixteen! Then we drove to Dallas for Stephanie and David's wedding, and on Sunday we woke up and drove back to Houston to see Baylor play, for the first time ever, in the Elite Eight! It was such a fun weekend!

Since it is Lent, I've been making meat free meals on Friday. This Friday I made delicious Salmon Burgers with Rosemary fries. They were so good, they literally made my mouth water as I was making them! I couldn't find a particular salmon burger recipe I really liked... So I combined all my favorite parts of about 4 different recipes and came up with this recipe! The recipe will make 4 burgers.

Salmon Burgers with Scallion Sour Cream Cheese Sauce

Ingredients:

• 4 (6-oz) skinless salmon fillets, cut into large chunks
• 1 Tbl grill seasoning (I used Montreal Seasoning by McCormick)
• 1 Tbl poppy seeds
• 1 Tbl sesame seeds
• 2 Tbl chopped fresh dill
• 3/4 cup ranch style or Italian style bread crumbs (thanks for the tip Dr. Tanner!)
• 2 egg yolks (to help everything hold together)
• extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling
• Fresh spinach leaves or any kind of green lettuce, for topping
• Sliced tomato, for topping
• Sliced red onion, for topping
• Burger buns, split and toasted

Sauce:

• 1/2 cup softened cream cheese
• 3 scallions, white and greens, chopped
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:

Preheat a large skillet over medium-high heat with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

Place salmon in a food processor and pulse to coarse grind meat (or if you are like me and don't own a food processor, I just chopped the salmon up as finely as I could, probably not as efficient as a food processor, but it got the job done).

 Transfer fish to a mixing bowl and season with grill seasoning, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, dill, egg yolks, and bread crumbs. Mix and form 4 patties, Drizzle burgers with evoo. If you have time,  store in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes to help all the flavors come together.

Cook burgers 4-5 minutes on each side for fully cooked fish.

While burgers cook, combine in a bowl the cream cheese and the scallions and fold in sour cream and lemon juice.

Top the burgers with lettuce, tomato, onion and sauce on crusty, toasted buns. Enjoy!

Rosemary Fries

Ingredients:

• 4 large Idaho potatoes, scrubbed (or 1 potato per person)
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• 4 to 5 sprigs fresh rosemary, finely chopped
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, divided (optional)
• 4-5 cloves of garlic

Directions:

Heat oven to 500 degrees F.

Cut 10 wedges from each potato and place on a baking sheet. Drizzle a couple tablespoon of oil over the potatoes to coat them lightly then season with rosemary, salt and pepper and 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes. Throw a couple of cloves of cracked garlic on the sheet with potatoes. 

Roast 25 minutes, turning once. Make sure you don't open the oven except to turn the fries half way through, so the oven will stay hot!