When It All Comes Together!

Coincidentally, I watched “What To Expect When You’re Expecting” the other day, and not to be a spoiler, but a couple ends up merging their food trucks into one food truck called “The Cheesy Pig”. Without even planning, the name for my newest creation popped up! I have been making it a priority to clean out the freezer lately, sometimes only cooking for one or two leaves you with frozen meat leftovers when you’re cutting recipes in half. I had some ground pork, and chorizo, and pork tenderloin, and thought I would go….say it with me…”whole hog” for a burger to celebrate the crazy hot weather we’ve just had delivered.

I also had some leftover American cheese from some amazing pimento cheese sandwich filling I’ll be sharing with you too. That said, I’m normally not an American cheese single buyer, it feels wrong after being the cheeseophile that I am, but here it made sense, it melts perfectly and oozes. With this being a somewhat Latin take on pork, I felt the nacho-like cheese lava was a good choice. For extra fun here, stuff a few jalapenos inside? Ooh, tell me when to come over.

The Cheesy Pig Burger

4 inch piece of dried chorizo, sliced into chunks

½ pound of pork tenderloin, cut into 1 inch rounds

1 pound ground pork

1 T cumin

½ T oregano

2 slices of American cheese, cut in quarters.

½ red onion, sliced into thin half circles

2 T butter

½ C greek yogurt, 2%

2 T whipped cream cheese

1 t Sriracha sauce

4 onion rolls, halved

Tomato, sliced

1 avocado, sliced

In a food processor pulse the pork tenderloin and chorizo until it’s well chopped and blended.

In a large mixing bowl, mix this pork tenderloin –chorizo mix with the ground pork, cumin and oregano. Make 4 patties using about 3 T less meat in each patty. You ‘ll have about 2/3^rd cup of meat left over. In the center of your formed patties, place two of the quarters in the middle of the patty. Take the 3 T of reserved pork and form this over the top, sealing it around the cheese so it wont’ ooze out. Place the “cheesed” side up on a tray lined with wax paper. Complete for the remaining patties.

In a small frying pan, place butter and onions and carmelize them until they are a golden brown. Remove onions and set aside leaving remains in the pan.

In a small bowl, mix together the yogurt, cream cheese and Sriracha sauce until well blended – adjusting heat as necessary.

In the pan used for the onions, fry each burger until cooked through – remember pork shouldn’t be rare, ever. – and prepare to assemble burgers.

Toast the onion roll and spread the yogurt mix on one side, and mash some avocado on the other. Top the yogurt with onions and tomato and place the burger on top, capping it with the avocado.

Enjoy!