Alright, we’ll just cut right to the chase here. The only thing that really matters about today is finding out how you can get this in mouth for dinner tonight…
Oh yeah, and we have another giveaway to announce today! Keep reading to find out how to win!
Back to the molten lava of cheese…
We both grew up with pizza burgers on our school lunch rotation. They usually appeared on the menu about once a month or so and they were ok. We never got too excited over them. We saved our school lunch excitement for chili, chicken fried steak, crispitos, and Italian dunkers!
But these pizza burgers are definitely worth getting excited over! Here is what we did…
Pizza Burgers
Serves: 4
Total Time: 25 minutes
Ingredients
1 lb ground beef
1 teaspoon dried italian seasoning blend
pinch of red pepper flakes
salt and pepper
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
4 slices provolone or mozzarella cheese
4 small ciabatta rolls
extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup tomato or pizza sauce
Directions
Heat your grill to high.
Using your hands, mix the italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, chopped garlic and salt and pepper into the ground beef.
Divide the ground beef into eight equal portions and form them into patties. The patties will be very small and thin, almost like a slider instead of a burger. After the patties are formed, break the slices of cheese into pieces and place them on half of the patties.
Place another patty on top of the patty with cheese and seal the edges of the two hamburger patties. Essentially, you are making a Juicy Lucy.
Brush the patties with olive oil and place on the heated grill for 4-5 minutes. Flip and grill for 4-5 more minutes. Remove hamburgers from the grill and let them rest for 5 minutes before serving.
While the patties are resting, cut the ciabatta rolls in half and brush with olive oil. Place them cut side up under the broiler in the oven until the rolls are golden brown.
Spread pizza sauce on each roll, put your burgers together, and enjoy these bad boys…
We served the burgers with a warm pasta salad, which was inspired by a pasta we saw Giada make on one of her shows. Go here to check out her original recipe. In our version, we used sun dried tomatoes instead of cherry tomatoes and Barilla Mini Farfalle instead of Penne Pasta. We just discovered that Barilla is making some pasta now that is enriched with vegetables. Our kids our generally good eaters, but we still are constantly looking for ways to sneak more vegetables into their diets. Not only was this pasta nutritious, it was also really delicious!
After dinner we were craving something sweet (what’s new). We have been dangerously addicted to these chocolate wafer cookies lately…
We CANNOT stay away from these things! Every single night we slowly sneak over to the cupboard to steal a wafer or two. Then we realized that they would go great with a cup of night time coffee (one of favorite things in the world). And you know what goes great with coffee? Coffee-Mate!
Wow. That was a really smooth segue. It was so good in fact, that I think we deserve a treat. Perhaps a chocolate wafer? Be right back…
Ok, sorry about that. (Wipes chocolate wafer crumbs from face)
Anyways, a few months back, we did a Food Face-Off Friday between Coffee-Mate and Half & Half. Coffee-Mate lost, mostly due to nutrition reasons. There is not actually any dairy in regular Coffee-Mate. It’s mostly water, sugar, and partially hydrogenated oil. Then Coffee-Mate came out with their Natural Bliss line, and we couldn’t have been more excited! This is the type of creamer we longed for…tasty and real! The folks at Coffee-Mate contacted us to thank us for speaking highly of the Natural Bliss line. How cool is that?! They gave us coupons for a free containers of Natural Bliss creamer to give away to some lucky readers!
There are three ways to enter to win one of four coupons for a free container of Coffee-Mate Natural Bliss Creamer. By Friday, 8/12 at 10:00pm CST, you can:
1. Visit our Facebook page and become a fan of 1 cup Awesome. Please also leave a comment on our Facebook page telling us that you want to win a free container of Coffee-Mate Natural Bliss Creamer from 1 cup Awesome.
2. Follow us on Twitter and send out a tweet to your followers that you want to win a free container of Coffee-Mate Natural Bliss Creamer from @1cupAwesome.
3. If you already follow us on Facebook or Twitter, you can still win! Just leave a comment here and tell us that you want to win a free container of Coffee-Mate Natural Bliss Creamer from 1 cup Awesome.
The four winners will picked at random and will be announced next Monday. Good luck!
The pizza burgers? GENIUS. Why didn’t I think of that? Definitely going on the menu for next week.
As for the CoffeeMate creamer, haven’t tried it yet but love that it’s actual cream and not the fake stuff. We’ve been sticking to just the fat free half and half but this would be a nice switch up.
Love the blog!
We were doing the fat free half and half too (horizon organic from Costco). We’ll still buy it for the times that we don’t want sweet coffee, but the coffee-mate is great when we want to change things up a bit.
I think your next giveaway should be a free dinner at your place. I need that top photo to be in my mouth right now.
It is 8:45am and I want that burger in my mouth again. Dang.
Oh those burgers look so delicious! I have been wanting to try that creamer, but I haven’t found it in the stores yet. I had to laugh at your mention of school lunch… we, too, looked forward to chili crispitos, Italian dunkers, and pizza, natch! Now I go eat lunch with my son on crispito day, but they aren’t as good as I remember.
We usually shop at Target and I know they carry it. I figured it would be available at more stores…hmmm.
We decided that we are totally doing a week of “school lunch” posts. Our favorite lunches, remixed!
its about time you can get good flavored creamer without all the other junk! pick me!! burgers look great too
Thanks Katie! Your name is in the drawing!
I would love to try the new creamer! I have never liked drinking those chemical filled ones!
What?! You don’t like partially hydrogenated oil in your fresh cup of coffee? Crazy!
Love me my mornin coffee.
I already follow you on twitter and I want to win a free container of Coffee-Mate Natural Bliss Creamer from 1 cup Awesome! That pasta salad looks amazing! Thinking I’ll have to try that sometime soon.
Thanks Jesse! The pasta is really, really good!
Those burgers look awesome!! And I love the natural bliss line!! I’ve seen it at Hv-Vee and Wal-Mart, also.
I would love to try some of that creamer! I started drinking my coffee black because I hated putting all of those fake ingredients in it! It just didn’t taste normal! Love your blog too and have been reading regularly for a few months now!
Thanks Suzi!
I had no idea there wasn’t any REAL dairy in coffee creamer! AAHHHH!!! Thank you so much for pointing this out to me! I’m looking forward to my chance at trying the new Natural Bliss! Good day!
I KNOW! Isn’t that crazy to realize there is no dairy?! It makes sense, but we were completely shocked.
I have never seen this coffee-mate creamer, but I’m definitely going to look for it now. And I just found your blog today via Iowa Girl Eats and am excited to check out your recipes, etc.
Thanks for checking us out Jill!
I want to win a free container of Coffee-Mate Natural Bliss Creamer! Would love to try the Sweet Cream flavor
I stopped buying the other creamers because of the lack of real/good ingredients; this is a nice alternative!
Agreed!
I want to win a free container of Coffee-Mate Bliss. I put coffee-mate in my iced coffee every morning.
We usually do that with our iced coffee too! It gives it a little sweetness and flavor. Love it.
Ooh! I’ve been wanting to try those! I have tried other natural ones, but they were so heavy! I’d love an alternative.
Dang, I know I’m too late to win the creamer, but just wanted to say thank you for the recommendation! Missy brought home ALL THREE to try out a few weeks ago. We started with caramel and have now moved on to sweet cream. What’s you & Sara’s fav??
We like the vanilla the best, but caramel is a close second for us.
Tried the burgers last night and loved them. My picky daughter Kelsey ate the whole burger!! Thanks Dave and Sarah, love the recipes!!
That is awesome Ann! Marley can be picky sometimes too, but she ate the whole burger as well. Now she requests the burgers all the time!