Summer's Over. This Turkey Burger Disagrees | Recipeish | Gustus Vitae

The grill is getting cold and the light starting to going early. That's fine. The flavor you actually miss from July is not charcoal; it's the blend you were shaking over everything for three months straight. Forever Summer does the whole job in a skillet: garlic, onion, cracked pepper, sweet paprika, herbs, lemon zest, a little heat. Ground turkey, a hot pan, twenty minutes, and you've got a cookout flavor on a weeknight.

Ground turkey is lean, which means there's almost no fat to carry flavor into the middle of the patty. So you season in three places: the meat, the mayo, and the top of the burger right before the lid goes on. Same tin, three hits. More is more, and with this blend it genuinely is.

• Yield: 4 burgers
• Time: 25 minutes
• Storage Notes: The mayo keeps a week and will quietly improve everything in your fridge.
• Difficulty: Easy

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 lb ground turkey, 93/7 if your store carries it; skip the 99 percent lean
• About 5 Tbs Forever Summer Seasoning, divided
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise, the good full-fat kind
• About 2 Tbs neutral oil
• 2 Tbs butter, softened, for the buns
• 4 soft buns, brioche or potato, nothing crusty
• 1 big ripe tomato, cut into thick slices
• 1 ripe avocado, sliced
• A handful of soft lettuce or baby spinach
• Kettle chips, on the side

DIRECTIONS

1. Stir 1 1/2 Tbs of the seasoning into the mayonnaise and put it in the fridge while you do everything else. Ten minutes is enough for it to stop tasting like mayo with something on top and start tasting like one thing.
2. Mix it light. Fold about 2 1/2 Tbs of the seasoning (link) into the turkey with your hands and stop the second it's distributed; turkey turns rubbery faster than beef and it never comes back. Shape four patties wider than your buns, about three quarters of an inch thick, and press a shallow dimple into the center of each one with your thumb. They shrink and dome as they cook. The dimple is why yours will still be flat.
3. Hot pan, no fiddling. Oil into a heavy skillet over medium-high until it shimmers, patties in, and then leave them alone for four minutes. You want a real crust, dark in spots. Flip once, another three to four minutes, 165°F in the middle. No pressing, no flattening, no peeking; every time you press you squeeze out the only moisture a lean bird has.
4. Toast the buns in the drippings. Pull the patties onto a plate to rest, butter the cut sides of the buns, and lay them face down in the same pan for about a minute. All that browned seasoning left behind goes straight into the bread. This is the step people skip and it's the best thirty seconds in the recipe.
5. Build it. Seasoned mayo on both halves, heavy. Patty, tomato, avocado, lettuce. The mayo on the top bun is what keeps the avocado from sliding out the back on the first bite.
6. Final sprinkle over the avocado, top bun on, and eat it standing up if that's where you are.

NOTES & VARIATIONS

Why the mayo matters. Fat carries flavor, and a lean turkey patty doesn't have any to spare. The seasoned mayo is not a condiment here; it's the fat delivery system that a beef burger would have built in. Don't go light on it.

Cheese, if you want it. A slice of provolone, havarti, or plain old American over the patty in the last minute of cooking, lid on the pan, thirty seconds. It melts into the crust and glues the tomato down. Nobody has ever regretted this.

Don't buy the 99 percent lean. It's a sawdust patty waiting to happen. If it's all you can find, work a tablespoon of olive oil into the meat along with the seasoning and pull the burgers off the heat the instant they hit temperature.

Grill it anyway. Two or three warm days left, probably. Same patties, same amounts, medium-high grates, oiled well because lean meat sticks. Forever Summer was built for exactly this, and going back outside costs you nothing.

Make it a bowl. Skip the bun, break the patty over greens with the tomato and avocado, and thin the seasoned mayo with a squeeze of lemon and a splash of water into a dressing. Same dinner, different Tuesday.

Double the mayo. You will want it tomorrow on a chicken sandwich, on a wedge of iceberg, under a fried egg, stirred into potato salad. The applications from here are endless. But make the burger first, on a cold night, with the chips on the side and the seasoning sitting out on the counter where you can reach it.