OK, so they weren’t really baked. They were cooked in my air fryer because my grill isn’t working so I couldn’t BBQ them. But it’s hard to know how to write about things cooked in the Air Fryer. Is it Air Fried? Air Fryer-ed? Roasted?

The important thing is that for our special Labor Day Dinner, we had a variety of burgers, all featuring Hatch Chiles. I was trying to see which one I liked the best.

This is a continuation of my earlier post about it being Hatch Chile season (see https://blissfullu.com/2025/08/31/hatch-chile-season/ if you missed it). This summer hasn’t felt very summer-like to me, and I have done most of the things I associate with summer. I haven’t gone to the pool, I haven’t gone to the beach, I haven’t gone on vacation, and I haven’t gone to a single barbecue.

But it’s OK. I’ve been more focused on my work and on political activism. And that was my choice.

My son is a vegetarian, so when he is home (which I LOVE), I only cook veggie burgers. And veggie burgers are one of the things that I don’t think I make better than the commercially-made ones. So that’s what we’ve had this summer.

Usually we get invited to some BBQ where I can have my once a season beef hamburger, but that didn’t happen this year. So I decided I should end the summer with a burger. But not just any burger. Since we were celebrating Hatch Chile season, I thought I should have a Hatch Chile burger. Or Two. Or Three.

How about a competition to see which Hatch Chile burger was the best?

I got an ad from Fresh Market about a beef Hatch Chile burger you could buy per patty. And at one of my Farmers Markets, they were selling a Hatch Chile pork sausage. But I wanted a burger, not a sausage patty. So I combined the Hatch Chile sausage with an equal amount of ground turkey from the Market. Finally, of course I needed a Hatch Chile veggie burger for my son, but I couldn’t find any commercial varieties that included Hatch Chile. So I had to make my own, based on a recipe from one of my favorite food writers Kenji López-Alt.

Since I didn’t have any recipes, I used the Fresh Market commercial Hatch Chile beef burger as my baseline. Then I added cheese and Hatch Chiles to my recipes until they looked like they had similiar amount to the beef burger.

The raw Hatch Chile beef burger

The amount of onions and Hatch Chiles I added to make two Turkey-Sausage burgers.

Once formed into a patty, I thought it looked pretty close to the beef burger.

A bean Hatch Chile burger is, of course, a whole other thing. It’s hard to see the Hatch Chiles, but they are in there.

So the upper left-hand one is the Turkey-Sausage Burger, upper right is the Beef Burger, and the two bottom ones are the Bean Burgers.

I served them on fresh sourdough bread from the Farmers Market. I only added mayonnaise to each sandwich because I didn’t want the “fixings” to distract from tasting the burgers themselves.

I ate a little of each.

This is what the Beef Burger looked like inside.

This what the Turkey-Sausage Burger looked like inside.

This what the Bean Burger looked inside.

This is my cat Mica supervising the Taste-Off.

And the winner is….?

Actually, they all were a success in my opinion. They all had about the same level of spiciness and a definite Hatch Chile taste to them. So I think I got the proportions of Hatch Chile to other ingredients right for all three (well, I guess Fresh Market got the beef burger right).

And I’m sorry, but if you are a carnivore, I just don’t think even the best veggie burger can compete with a meat burger. Kenji’s main goal in his recipe was to avoid a mushy burger, and these were definitely not mushy. They did have a “meaty” texture. But compared to meat, they were dry and crumbly, even though I added an extra egg to Kenji’s recipe to try to keep the bean burgers together. However, what I noticed is that I really liked the greater volume of these bean burgers. All the commercial veggie burgers I buy come in a slim, quarter-pounder size. But I really like biting into a thicker, half-pounder burger. So maybe I should try making my own veggie burgers more often.

But that’s a project for another week.

In the end, my favorite was the Turkey-Sausage Burger! It was a little lighter and just tasted “fresher” somehow. And it didn’t taste like sausage…it tasted like a burger with a lovely Hatch Chile spiciness. The beef one tasted heavier and muted the Hatch Chile taste. Although it looked more like the medium rare level I prefer for burgers, whereas the Turkey-Sausage one looked more cooked through, it wasn’t really juicier.

So the championship goes to team Turkey-Sausage Burger!

Now, I’ll probably never make these again. I was just eyeballing everything and so I don’t have a recipe with actual quantities that I can replicate. Remember, I’m a Pirate in the Kitchen (https://blissfullu.com/2020/07/25/a-pirate-in-the-kitchen/) But it was an interesting project to cap off my Labor Day weekend. And it was the most work, but also the most fun of my Hatch Fest cooking. And it took my mind off the impending loss of our democracy for a few hours…

But I still have some Hatch chiles left, so let’s see what I end up doing with those…