The hamburger is an American classic, and properly loaded up it can provide just about all the essential nutrients in a convenient starchy bun. Unless you can’t eat the bread that is.

Of course, everyone loves some fried potatoes with their burger, but I was kind of in a rush the other day and needed to turn a half pound of beef into a whole meal-burger. Luckily, there were plenty of fresh veggies around…

• 1/2 pound beef
• 2oz. mozorella cheese
• 1/6 large onion
• 2 stalks long green onion
• 1 slice red pepper
• About 10 leafs of spinach
• 1 slice back bacon

Shape the burger into a patty, just be sure not to overhandle it or add salt before it cooks.  Drop the burger and the back bacon into a frying pan at about half heat, flipping the rasher (bacon) quickly and resting it on top of the burger.  (I started off with low-fat beef so I had to make sure to conserve oils)

When the bacon is ready, chop up all the veggies and add them to the frying pan.  Add peppers & onions first, then the spinach & long green onions.

As the veggies start to fry, flip the burger and add the first layer of cheese to the top.  Place the bacon off to the side for a second then start to pile up the hot veggies onto the cheese.  Once the veggies start to melt the cheese pretty well, add another layer of cheese an top of the veggies and drop the bacon on top of that!

Not only does the gluten-free meal-burger fill you up like a complete meal, it tastes pretty great as well!  Since mine was a bit dry, I made up a quick sauce from spicy brown mustard and some regular old fashioned mayo.  If you started with a fattier ground beef, you might not even need that!

Happy holidays and happy eating!