Greek Turkey Burgers with Cucumber Salad and Yogurt Sauce makes for a perfectly well-balanced family dinner, and I also enjoy making this for myself for lunch meal prep. Ground turkey breast is mixed with kalamata olives, roasted red peppers, onion, breadcrumbs and spices to form deliciously seasoned patties. Served with a refreshing cucumber, tomato and red onion salad and homemade tangy cucumber yogurt sauce, this meal tastes like it took hours to create. In reality, you’ll be in and out of the kitchen in about 30 minutes!
Update: Shady Brook Farms enjoyed this recipe so much, it is now featured on their website in the recipe section!
All about Greek Turkey Burgers with Cucumber Salad and Yogurt Sauce
How I updated this recipe
My original recipe for these burgers called for ground chicken. I created this recipe years ago and I loved it! The only problem this time around was that we were expecting a snow storm this weekend, which meant the supermarket was totally cleared out by the time I went shopping for my ingredients.
There was no ground turkey or chicken to be found! Typically, I would use 2 lbs of ground chicken to create six burgers, but that wasn’t going to happen this time. Instead, I pulled a 1.25 lb package of ground turkey breast out of my freezer, and decided to make the recipe into four burgers.
How I flavored the burgers
The turkey meat is mixed with olives, roasted red peppers, and onions. This time, I pureed them in my food processor to get them diced super small. It created almost a paste. It was so easy to mix this flavorful paste into the turkey meat and other ingredients. In the past when I made these, I would just chop up the veggies. But this time, I really found that blending it up enabled the flavor to permeate the burgers.
Why I made my own yogurt sauce
I forgot to mention, the supermarket was also out of my favorite tzatziki sauce! I typically buy the Cedar’s tzatziki and absolutely love it. At first, I was discouraged that the supermarket was out of so many things I needed; but instead, I decided to improvise, and to revise this recipe to include a homemade yogurt sauce.
I am honestly so glad that I was forced to create my own yogurt sauce, because it’s incredibly fresh and delicious tasting. You also can have 1/4 cup of the yogurt sauce for a really low amount of points and calories. It worked out really well! Plus, if you’re living a healthy lifestyle, you probably have Greek yogurt on hand. So making this yogurt sauce is so simple.
The easiest salad ever
As for the salad, it pairs really well with this meal. If you enjoy chick peas, they would work really well here also. This recipe is so versatile, feel free to add anything else you enjoy. You can serve these burgers on pitas, or, like I did: with mini naan! I buy these from Stonefire. They are so delicious, and perfect for scooping up bits of salad and yogurt sauce.
Now let’s get to cooking!
What you’ll need to make Greek Turkey Burgers with Cucumber Salad and Yogurt Sauce
For the Greek Turkey Burgers, you’ll need:
- fat free ground turkey (or chicken) breast
- red onion
- roasted red peppers (packed in water)
- kalamata olives (pitted)
- fat free feta
- panko breadcrumbs
- fresh parsley
- dried oregano
- dried dill
- kosher salt
To make the Cucumber, Tomato and Red Onion Salad, you’ll need:
- cherry tomatoes
- cucumbers
- red onion
- kosher salt
- dried dill
- dried oregano
- red wine vinegar
- olive oil spray
For the Yogurt Sauce, you’ll need:
- plain non fat Greek yogurt
- the juice of 1/2 lemon
- cucumber
- garlic
- kosher salt
- dried dill
- fresh parsley
How to make the Greek Turkey Burgers
These turkey burgers are flavored with a ton of different ingredients. These are not your average, boring turkey burgers!
To start, quarter the red onion, and add it to a food processor, along with the roasted red peppers and olives.
Pulse the ingredients together until they form a mixture that looks like this.
Next, grab a mixing bowl, and combine the other burger ingredients, along with the puree.
I also weighed the entire batch of the meat to ensure that each of my patties would be approximately the same size.
Next, form four equal sized balls out of the mixture, and drop them onto a preheated grill pan that has been sprayed with olive oil.
Notice, I don’t form patties here. Instead, I keep them in the shape of balls. Then, with my spatula, I press down on each one to form a patty.
Cook the burgers until they are cooked through, or their internal temperature reaches 165F.
How to make the Cucumber, Tomato, and Red Onion Salad
First, peel and slice your cucumbers, and thinly slice the red onion. Add them to a large mixing bowl, along with the cherry tomatoes.
Next, add your seasonings, vinegar, and olive oil spray.
Toss everything together with tongs. Taste for seasoning. That’s it!
How to make the Yogurt Sauce
Grab a small bowl, and add your yogurt. Grab your cucumber and peel the outside skin. Then, with a large cheese grater, grate the cucumber into the bowl with the yogurt.
Next, mince the garlic and chop the fresh parsley, and add that to the bowl along with the other ingredients. Mix everything together and taste for seasoning.
Putting it all together, serving, and meal prep
This meal can be served however you wish; you can make sandwiches with buns or pitas, or you can use the burger as a topping on your salad. That’s how I chose to eat it for meal prep this week. I used the burger as a topping on my salad, topped with the yogurt sauce, and served with my mini naan dippers.
For meal prep, I combined each burger with the salad in my meal prep containers. Before eating, I will remove the burger and heat it up separately from the salad, and then serve them together. I keep the yogurt sauce and the naan separate to prevent anything from getting soggy in the fridge.
Greek Turkey Burgers with Cucumber Salad and Yogurt Sauce
Equipment
- grill pan or frying pan
- mixing bowls
Ingredients
Greek Turkey Burgers
- 1.25 lb ground turkey breast, or ground chicken breast
- 1/2 red onion, small
- 1/2 cup roasted red peppers, packed in water
- 1/4 cup pitted kalamata olives
- 1/4 cup fat free feta
- 1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley
- 1/4 tsp dried oregano
- 1/2 tsp dried dill
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
Cucumber, Tomato and Red Onion Salad
- 2 cucumbers
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes
- 1/2 red onion
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp dried dill
- 1/2 tsp dried oregano
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
- olive oil spray
Yogurt Sauce
- 1/2 cup plain non fat Greek yogurt
- 1/2 lemon, juiced
- 1/2 cucumber, peeled, grated
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp dried dill
- 1 tbsp parsley, fresh
Instructions
Greek Turkey Burgers
- Quarter the onion, and then add the onion, red peppers, and olives to a food processor.
- Pulse until they are finely minced.
- Chop the parsley.
- Add the turkey, panko, food processor mixture, feta, salt, dill, oregano, and parsley to a bowl. Mix with your hands.
- Form 4 equal sized balls (tip: weigh the batch and divide by four).
- Preheat a grill pan over medium heat. Spray with cooking spray.
- Drop the balls onto the heated grill pan and smash with your spatula to form patties (since the meat mixture can be sticky).
- Cook thoroughly, about 10 minutes or until internal temperature reaches 165F.
Cucumber, Tomato and Red Onion Salad
- Peel and slice the cucumbers.
- Thinly slice the red onion.
- Add the cucumbers, red onion and cherry tomatoes to a large mixing bowl.
- Add the red wine vinegar and a spritz of olive oil spray.
- Add the salt, oregano, and dill.
- Toss to combine.
Yogurt Sauce
- Peel the cucumber and grate it using a cheese grater.
- Mince the garlic. Chop the fresh parsley.
- Add the cucumber to a small bowl with the yogurt, garlic, and parsley.
- Cut the lemon in half, and squeeze half into the bowl.
- Add the dill and salt. Stir to combine.
Notes
- 3 WW points (green plan)
- 2 WW points (blue and purple plans)
Nutrition
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Made this for meal prep! These Greek burgers are amazing! So juicy and flavorful!! Highly recommend!!
thank you! so glad you enjoyed it!
This was probably my favorite meal prep for lunch! I looked forward to my lunch every day. I ended up making mine into meatballs because the mixture was hard to form into burgers and stay together but the meatballs were the perfect size to store and pop in the microwave to heat up for lunch.
I made this greek chicken burger tonight and it was SO flavorful. I wanted to make something different and this was exactly what I needed. This is the second dish I’ve made from this website that came out delicious and flavorful! Double thumbs up!!
These are so delicious!!!! Made these for our lunches this week! The flavors are so classic and tasty! Will use mini pitas to make sandwiches instead for my husband!
Question if I buy 2 pounds of ground chicken do I use everything else in this recipe? I’m going to make tomorrow with ground chicken that I found
I just made this recipe for dinner, pairing it with homemade naan made from Biz’s pizza dough. AMAZING!!! Thanks so much!
Made these for meal prep and OMG the flavor! Usually I am skeptical of lean turkey burgers because they end up dry and bland, but the paste concept with the olives and peppers is GENIUS! Plus the feta and spices, I couldn’t believe how juicy it was reheated the next day. I used 2 lbs of turkey (and doubled the peppers and olives and seasoning) and made 6 huge burger patties! Will be making these again. Thank you Steph for another amazing recipe!
I have made many of your recipes ( which I love ) but this one has to be my favorite….. everything about it is delicious 😋
This is the first turkey burger I like. Thank you!
Delicious!! Will be made again and again!!!
So delicious!!! At first, I kinda thought it was odd to have a chicken burger without a bun, then I tasted this. It is sooooo delicious and actually tastes better on a bed of lettuce. It reminds me of a gyro. I modified the yogurt recipe with light Mayo and dairy free yogurt. I think I’m going to make it again for next week’s meal prep, too!
Excellent – I’ve shared the recipe with a friends and family already. It was so delicious and easy to make! Thanks!
So yummy and refreshing. My husband was so impressed by this dish.
These turkey burgers were great! Lots of flavor and easy to make. Made great leftovers for lunch too!
These were great!! So flavorful and really easy to make. Made for great leftovers as well 🙂
These burgers and the entire meal was out of this world!!! Loved that it kept me full and that its only 3 points not included the naan bread!! Prep was easy and quick! I will probably be making these again for meal prep this week! Steph does it again!!
These burgers are absolutely delicious! I’ve looked forward to my lunch all week.
Made these for my Greek mother-in-law and they were a hit! They were so good with the tzatziki and ate them in a bun. Would definitely make these again!
Best. Turkey. Burger. Ever!!!!
So full of flavour and so easy to make.
These will definitely be in the dinner rotation for sure!
Thank you for sharing such a delicious recipe.
10/10 would recommend. Didn’t have olives but followed everything else and they were amazing.
This dinner was a bit time consuming but OMG so worth it! My husband was amazed. Lol. I always make turkey burgers but for some reason these stuck to my grill pan even though I sprayed it. I almost bought to Tiziki sauce at Trader Joe’s because I was being lazy but at the last minute when I read the ingredients I put it back and made her recipe. It was so delicious I’m so happy I didn’t buy the premade tiziki. It seriously tasted like something at our local Greek restaurant. The only small change I was would make is to leave out the breadcrumbs and maybe put the Kalamata olives in the cucumber salad instead of the patties. I can’t wait for lunch tomorrow!
Stop what you’re doing and make this! Soooo good. The burgers, the salad, the yogurt sauce = pure perfection! Thanks for another amazing recipe! 🙂
These are absolutely delicious!! I definitely pureed the olive mixture too much so my burgers were a little sloppy, but they taste amazing! Made these with the orzo salad for my lunch prep this week and everyone in my office has commented how amazing the burger smells when I reheat it (reheating does not dry the burger out at all). This will definitely be on repeat for me!
Wow! I never comment on recipes , but I just made this for meal prep last night and it was amazing. I haven’t meal prepped something this good in so long! It makes me so excited to each my lunch everyday. Thank you!!
Just made these. They were delicious.so flavorful and moist. Looking forward to leftovers for lunch this week
This recipe is so easy and tastes fantastic!! The burgers are so juicy. So happy I meal prepped it for my lunch and didn’t have to share. 🙂
Love these as burgers or meatballs! I swap out ground chicken & real Greek feta, but the recipe is so easy & even my Greek husband loves them! They are a regular meal here @ our house.
These are in my rotation. I make them smaller and freeze them. I use store bought tzaziki because I’m lazy.
I love these burgers. They’re my go to for lunch meal prep. So delicious. I can see why Shady Brook Farms posted this recipe.
I made the burgers using chicken and the only change I made was I used fresh dill and I added a few cloves of minced garlic (since I wasn’t making the yogurt sauce). My husband (who is Greek) raved about the burgers!
Meal prepped these burgers with yogurt sauce and salad for lunches this week. I had to pinch off a bite of one of the burgers and OMG they are so good. Another home run in the meal prep department.
So so so good!!! Made this for dinner last night and it did not disappoint! My husband isn’t a turkey burger fan so I made a modified version for him and my boys with ground beef and when I tasted not he the turkey burgers were by far the better option!! Since I made the full recipe for myself I have plenty leftover for my lunches this week since I ended up with 5 burgers! Love when dinner turns in to lunch prep for the week!
We call her Burger Girl in my house for a reason. This recipe is full of all the flavors of happiness.
Can these be made on the grill outside? And any Rec if so. Thanks Steph
AMAZING!! This whole meal is so flavorful and satisfying. We absolutely loved it! I love how a lot of the ingredients are used throughout the different parts of the recipe. Totally hit it out of the park with this one Stephanie!
Made this for dinner tonite and it was so delicious; !it has all the flavors I crave and the Turkey burgers stayed juicy.
Thank you for including a link that allowed me to add this to my WW tracker for personal points.
This is the most delicious turkey Burger recipe I have ever tried😀 Made these for lunch this week and the portion size is so filling, Thank you for this delicious recipe and all your delicious recipes!!
Couldn’t believe how moist and flavorful these were. They didn’t even need the yogurt sauce. The accompanying salad was perfect with the burgers. Thanks so much for another great recipe.
Amazing! I made the roasted pepper marinade and salad night before to make things easier for tonight. This was a delicious recipe, light and soooooo flavorful.
So delicious!
These burgers are incredible! I grilled them on my ninja foodie grill and they were perfect. Such a flavorful and healthy meal that will be on repeat in my home. Thank you for the recipes!
I saw you commented on Shady Brook Farms showing your recipe, Kudos to you. I happen to find it today and was going tot let you know, but you already do! They should have given you credit though.
Love that recipe.
I was nervous about these at first…I always struggle cooking turkey! But these are amazing, so juicy and great flavor. I made the taziki as well as the salad and I loved all of it! ANNNDDDD the 4 burgers are huge!
These burgers are so delicious. I made a double batch for the freezer so I have some ready whenever I’m craving them. My daughter says it’s my best meal yet!
Very moist and flavorful burgers! Healthy alternative to beef is an added bonus.
This is a staple in our home. It’s so flavorful and filling!
Made this for lunches- turned them into meatballs for easier quicker cooking and served with roasted vegetables! So delicious!
Soooo delish! How would you suggest re-heating? Thanks for your wonderful, diverse, healthy, always-satisfying, WW-friendly recipes!!
Two questions.. 1) has anyone grilled these on the bbq? And if you froze them, did you freeze them cooked or raw?
Thanks!
Loved this! Delicious
This recipe sounds so good. I get tired of the traditional salad with toppings for my lunch. THANK YOU for sharing this recipe.