We eat salads for dinner frequently.  Dinner salads seem like they should have a little more substance to them.  They need meat and cheese to be filling enough for a dinner.  We’ve tried them all.  Taco salads, yes.  Breadless sub (hoagie, hero, whatever your local name for it is) salad, yes.  Grilled chicken salad, yes.  Venison cheeseburger salad, possible.  Very, very possible.  Bacon, mushrooms, four kinds of onions, dill pickles.  Homemade Russian Dressing. Yes, please.

Venison Cheeseburger Salad

This take a a little bit of work to prepare.  There is some cooking and lots of cutting and chopping, but it still qualifies as a fairly easy weeknight meal.  You could make your meat and dressing up a couple days in advance, too.

Start with some chopped bacon.  I actually chop it before I cook it.  Finely chop some mushrooms and a sweet onion.  I often do this in my Ninja Food Processor.  (According to Rachel Ray–I have not tried this–you can chop your bacon in food processor if it is frozen.)  Next, cook your bacon, onions, minced garlic and mushrooms in a heavy skillet.  (We us 12.5 cast iron one.  Probably the item in my kitchen that gets the most use after my cutting board and knives.)

Once the bacon is cooked, remove it from the pan to set aside.  Add ground venison (or other ground meat) to the skillet to brown.  I generally don’t drain the bacon fat since I use it to cook the venison which is a lean meat and needs added fat.  If you are using ground beef, you might want to drain off the bacon fat.  Before the meat has browned completely, add Worcester sauce, smoked paprika, salt and pepper.  Cook a few more minutes to let the flavors meld.  Let it cool slightly or completely based on your preference.

The Salad

Of course, salad is always about the garden fresh vegetables that you prefer.  However, when we make Venison Cheeseburger Salad, we try to include typical cheeseburger toppings.  So we go with lettuce, tomatoes, and sliced onions.  Avocado, yum.  Cheese, obviously.  We used slices of white American that I cut into smaller pieces.  But, any kind of cheese you might put on a cheeseburger will do the trick.

Then we get daring and add pickle slices (we use both dill and bread and butter), green onions and fried onions.  Oh yes, that is 4 kinds of onions in this baby!  (4?  Don’t forget the cooked ones)  Top it all with some Russian Dressing (think “special sauce”) and you have a hearty dinner worthy salad.  Leftover meat makes an excellent lunch salad too.

So go make yourself a yummy cheeseburger salad with all the toppings.  Let us know what you like to put on your cheeseburgers and your cheeseburger salads, too!

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