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Hands-on Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 20 minutes
Serves 4
- 1 Tbsp cooking oil
- 1 c chopped green sweet pepper
- ¼ c chopped red sweet pepper
- ¼ c finely chopped onion
- 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
- 1 medium mango, seeded, peeled, chopped
- ¼ c apple jelly
- 1 Tbsp lime juice
- dash salt
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- ⅓ c bottled jerk sauce
- ¼ c fine dry bread crumbs
- 1 lb lean ground beef
- 4 ciabatta rolls or hamburger buns, split
- 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
- In a medium saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add sweet peppers, onion and ginger; cook and stif for 3 minutes. Add mango, jelly, lime juice and salt; cook and stir until jelly melts. Set aside.
- In a large bowl, combine egg, ¼ c of the jerk sauce and the bread crumbs. Add ground beef; mix well. Using hands, shape mixture into four ½” thick patties.
- For a charcoal grill, place patties on the grill rack directly over medium coals. Grill, uncovered, for 10 to 13 minutes or until done (160°F), turning and brushing once with the remaining jerk sauce halfway through grilling. If desired, toast ciabatta rolls on the grill. (For gas grill, preheat grill. Reduce heat to medium. Place patties, then ciabatta rolls, if desired, on gas grill over heat. Cover and grill as above.)
- Divide cheese among bottoms of rolls. Serve burgers in rolls with some of the salsa. Serve remaining salsa on the side.
My husband is a fan of some jerk spiced foods so this caught my eye when I came across in an edition of The Nest magazine a couple years back. Come to think of it I just up and stopped receiving that magazine. Hmm . . . that’s sad. Anywho, so I finally got around to making this recipe.
I had a hard time finding jerk sauce. I ended up settling for this Caribbean Jerk marinade. I think it did the trick but I think there’s something even better out there that I just can’t seem to find.
I usually just make hamburg patties out of meat only – no additions – and use a Tupperware set to shape them. Now I’m not sure if it was because this marinade may be thinner than a sauce. Or if the meat was just so fresh. Or a combination of lots of ingredients and maybe my patty making skills but these patties did not stay together. And my husband, manning the grill, had a tough time working with them. As you can see they just fell a part and ended up looking more like sloppy joes.
As I’ve said many a time (usually when I have a tough time with a dish cooperating for a nice presentation like this one), it doesn’t necessarily matter how things look but how they taste. And this one wsa pretty good. Lots of flavors as I’m sure you can imagine. And I served it with a side of pasta salad I picked up at the grocer. But given that it didn’t really float my boat and is quite a bit of work chopping all the produce, making the salsa and patties from scratch, it’s not high on my list to remake. If I came across the right jerk sauce I’m picturing but have yet to find, maybe that’d bump it up the list quite a bit.
Do you know of a good jerk sauce?