Buffalo Chicken Burgers & Stuffed Jalapenos

Dinner on the patio. Warm weather is here again!

Grilling season is here! Yesterday’s sunshine and warm temperatures had me dying to grill some burgers and vegetables for dinner. But, for the first grill meal of the season, I didn’t want to do plain old beef burgers. So I came up with these buffalo chicken burgers and cheese-stuffed jalapeños instead. Now I realize this meal probably isn’t for everyone, at least not both items together. But the husband and I are lovers of spicy food. After all, I’m the girl who, at age two, thought it perfectly acceptable to drink straight salsa. My husband will eat even hotter foods than I will. So for us, it was a fun way to eat something different on a lazy Sunday evening.

One of my favorite things about grilling is how easy it can make food prep. That was definitely the case with this meal. The most time-consuming part of the whole process was cutting and seeding the jalapeños. And it dirtied very few dishes, which is a definite accomplishment for me. To make things even easier, you could use this Jalapeño Pepper Roaster from Williams-Sonoma. My uncle has one, and gives it rave reviews. Since I don’t have a special pepper-grilling gadget, I had to adapt. Here’s what I did.

Buffalo Chicken Burgers
Serves 4

1 lb. ground chicken
1/3 c. breadcrumbs
1/3 c. hot sauce (I used Valentina
1 egg
1 tbsp. minced garlic
8 oz. bleu cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
4 large burger buns
1 onion, sliced
Green leaf lettuce
4 tbsp. mayo
4 tbsp. ranch dressing

Directions
1. In a medium-sized bowl, combine chicken, egg, breadcrumbs, hot sauce, garlic and 4 oz. blue cheese. Shape into patties.
2. Grill over medium-high heat until done, approximately 5 minutes on each side.
4. While burger are grilling, combine mayo and ranch dressing.
5. Once burgers are done, sprinkle with the remaining bleu cheese. Garnish with lettuce, tomato and the ranch sauce.

Cheese-Stuffed Jalapeños
Makes 8 peppers

8 large Jalapeño peppers
8 oz. cream cheese
1 tsp. Adobo w/ cumin.

Directions
1. In a small bowl, combine cream cheese and Adobo. Set aside.
2. Cut a vertical slit down peppers. Remove seeds while keeping peppers intact.
3. Stuff each pepper with approximately 1 ounce of cream cheese mixture. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.
5. Grill peppers over medium-high heat until done, approximately 10 minutes.

Peppers waiting to be grilled. I'll definitely be playing with this idea in the future. Chorizo, bacon or veggies would all be good additions.