Healthy Homemade Hamburgers and Baked Fries

Sometimes I really want to go to some fast food restaurant and order hamburger with fries and enjoy it... BUT, once I start thinking about how much fat is in fast food, how bad for your body it can be (I was more convinced after watching some documentaries about fast food) and since I'm a healthy eater, fast food just drops out of my lunch/dinner menu. However, hamburger and fries don't! You still can enjoy HEALTHY burgers and fries, which are way more delicious than in any fast food restaurant. My hubby loves them!!

So, in this blog post I'll show you how I make my homemade hamburgers and fries from the scratch. Let's begin!

I bake buns for hamburgers by myself, I usually make them from regular bread dough recipe (you can find the recipe here). Before sending them into the oven I cover buns with plain yogurt and sesame seeds for some pretty finished product.

Once buns are ready, time to move on to prepare burger meat. 

For 5 servings you'll need:

• Little more than a half pound of ground beef (I made small balls as a measurement of a serving, and 5 meat balls took little more than a 1/2 lb)
• 1 medium sized onion
• 1/2 cup of bread crumbs or small piece of bread, which approximately equals to 1/4th of a bun
• 3/4 of a teaspoon of salt
• a little bit of pepper

I also added some ground garlic spice. Make sure to not over-salt if you have garlic salt. My ground garlic spice doesn't have salt in it, so I added salt separately. 

In order to prepare meat for hamburger patties, take grater and grate an onion. Once grated, take only mashed part of the onion and add to the meat, you don't want too much onion juice in the meat. If you're using bread, just grate it as well. If not, then add your bread crumbs. Now add salt, pepper, spices and mix until everything is nicely mixed together. 

Depending on how many servings you are making, form patties. I'm sure these patties would be awesome if grilled, but cooking on the pan works too! I added little bit of an olive oil in the pan (you can use any type of a cooking oil), sauteed patty until one side was red, then turned it over, reduced the heat and covered it for 8-10 minutes. And that's it! Your hamburgers are ready! Mine turned out to be little chubby, they shrank a bit while cooking, but still look good! Now, cut everything you want to have in your burger. I like cheese, tomatoes, pickles, lotus, some mustard and ketchup in mine!

Let's move on to fries! For each serving of fries you'll need:

• 1 medium sized potato
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• salt, pepper and some spices (paprika works great!)

Cut potatoes as fries' shape. In a bowl mix spices, salt and olive oil. Add a mixture to potatoes, mix, place on a foil, bake in a preheated oven (400 F) for about 40 minutes. After 15-20 minutes you should turn potato pieces over, and continue baking them until they are ready. 

Now, make your burger by adding your favorites and serve with fries on the side. Enjoy!