I love cheeseburgers. They're my Achilles' heel any time I'm trying to cut weight. No matter how good I'm doing on a cutting plan, I eventually give into my craving and go get a burger. I fucking love them. Most of us do, too. How many of us go a week without eating a burger? I'm guessing that absent my vegetarian friends, there's not too many of us that do so. Like Samuel Jackson said, they're the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.
Was he being sarcastic? I'm not sure.
So I've spent no less than two years trying to find a way to make one that's low in fat and doesn't taste like ass. This has been one major headache after another, with massive fail after massive fail, and I'm going to share all of that with you now before I get to the good version. Consider it a cautionary tale so you don't do all this shit yourself.
1. Just buy the lean stuff (96% fat free) and cook it as you would a normal burger
Why does this fail? Because the stuff is as dry as the Sahara. Until you try this, you don't realize how important fat is in making a juicy, delicious cheeseburger. On its own, this stuff takes like mushy, overcooked steak. I even put this shit in spaghetti sauce once and it didn't do anything to make this nasty stuff any less dry. On its own, it's fucking awful.
2. Buy the lean stuff and put fat in it
I did this when I went to Medical Weight Loss Clinic a few years ago when I made a hard effort to cut weight. Because I was allowed one tablespoon of Land O' Lakes spread and 4.5 ounces of lean ground beef, I put the two together after I read some stuff on the internet suggesting adding fat to the ground beef. This did work to make the burger taste good, albeit with a slight buttery flavor. However, I stopped doing it after I ended my MWLC diet plan because I found that when you add fat to the burger, you're pretty much breaking even with 80/20 traditional ground beef. I could get away with that when my diet was restricted to 1,600 calories a day. Not so much now.
3. Use a substitute for ground beef
I do enjoy a good 85/15 turkey burger. It's not as good as ground beef, but it's good nonetheless. Still, after I checked the calorie content on turkey and ground beef, I found that when you account for an equal percentage of fat, the difference in calories is pretty negligible. The only way to see a severe reduction in calories is by getting the super lean ground turkey, which leads to the same issues as above.
Bison is another substitute for ground beef. Like its turkey counterpart, it's delicious in its own right. Unfortunately, it also has 17 grams of fat per 4 ounce serving, and is also expensive as fuck. You will never find bison on sale. It's always going to be $11-$12 a pound, and the fat content is about the same as your average 80/20 ground beef (18 grams per 4 ounce serving).
Don't even bother with that ground chicken shit. I love chicken and still won't touch that garbage.
4. Grind up your own lean steak into ground beef
This really sounded great on paper when I decided to try it. I bought an inexpensive meat grinder on Amazon, set it up, and tossed in some lean sirloin.
You know what happens when you grind up lean sirloin and try to cook it as a burger? It turns right back into a steak. Steak is delicious, but you don't do this because you want a steak. You want a burger.
5. Find success on accident
Since I watch a lot of healthy recipe videos on YouTube, I stumbled onto a channel from a guy that calls himself Remington James. The first video that I came across showed how to make a mini deep dish pizza made with fat free shredded cheese. Until then, I didn't even know that fat free shredded cheese existed.
Fat free cheese is very hard to find in Southeast Michigan, which made it pretty infuriating that it was obvious that Remington James was buying his stuff from his local Kroger. It wasn't until a few months ago that my local Kroger started stocking fat free cheese slices and fat free cream cheese (which I've used to make some delicious low calorie protein cheesecake). I downloaded apps from several grocery stores into my phone, only to find out that the closest place that has fat free shredded cheese is at a Walmart two towns away. I'm letting you know this in case you need to know how to get it yourself. Download all the apps of nearby grocery stores into your phone, and search until you find one.
I just realized I turned this into one of those annoying Instagram posts where the writer shares their life story before getting to the recipe. Ugh. My apologies. Recipe is coming up, I promise. I just want to give credit where credit is due.
Anyway, after watching his pizza video, a few others from him popped up in my "recommended" section, and two of them really stood out for me. The first was his "High Protein Bodybuilding Grilled Cheese Sandwich". I'm trying that later this week, as it looks like a tasty way to make breakfast. The second was his video for a "Healthy Bodybuilding Bacon Cheeseburger Recipe". Here's the video for that:
The macros for this is 15 grams of fat, 24 grams of carbohydrates, and 70 grams of protein.
For those of you that can't view videos for some reason, here's the breakdown of that recipe:
Ingredients:
A half pound of 96/4 lean ground beef
garlic paste (no measurement given, use to taste)
diced jalapenos (optional, I did not use)
28 grams fat free shredded cheddar cheese
One slice of fat free American cheese
One sandwich slim hamburger bun (we both used Kroger brand, I don't know if other stores have them)
Two slices of turkey bacon
I had never used fat free cheese or turkey bacon before, so I was worried about the taste. It came out fantastic. Trust me on this one.
Take all the ingredients except your cheese slice, sandwich slim, and turkey bacon and mix together. I recommend using a substantial amount of garlic paste to help add moisture to the burger.
Set your frying pan to medium heat and spray your frying pan with non-stick cooking spray (lean beef WILL stick to your pan) and cook the burger for about five minutes on each side, making sure the burger is cooked all the way through (unless you like a little red in your burger, that's up to you).
After the burger is cooked, put your cheese slice on it and set aside. Fry your turkey bacon and add it to your burger. Place on bun and eat.
This burger tasted great. The garlic paste and shredded cheese helped to add moisture to the burger without adding fat calories. I'm really surprised at how good the fat free cheese tasted. And turkey bacon is a lot better than it has any right to be. I just wish it could get super crispy like pork bacon.
I'll be making this again for sure.
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