These Hawaiian style burgers are made with ground turkey and basted in teriyaki sauce. Toasted buns are topped with burgers, more sauce, and sliced pineapple for a delicious flavor combination that’s super easy to throw together, too! These are a fun family favorite in the summer on the grill, and great for a skillet year round.
Ingredient Notes
- Ground Turkey – This recipe calls for lean ground turkey. The leanest ground turkey you can buy is just turkey breast and has a tendency to be dry and flavorless. Look for turkey that is 93/7 (that’s 93% lean and 7% fat) or even 90/10. This means it has some dark meat mixed in which provides moisture, a touch of fat, and flavor to the final burger.
- Bread Crumbs – Use plain, unseasoned bread crumbs. Panko crumbs would work as well.
- Pineapple Slices – Use pineapple canned in juice. You will need both the fruit and the juice for this recipe.
- Ginger – While you can always use dried ginger in a pinch, fresh ginger packs a flavorful punch, s use it if you can.
- Teriyaki Sauce – You will need a nice, thick teriyaki sauce, not the kind that is thin like plain soy sauce. Look for this in the Asian foods aisle of the grocery store. I usually buy Kikkomen Teriyaki Baste and Glaze. If you want to make your own, try this Teriyaki Sauce.
- Mayonnaise – Mayo is optional, but definitely tasty on the finished burger!
Instructions
- First, gently combine some ground turkey, bread crumbs, diced bell pepper, green onion, minced ginger, some pineapple juice, and salt. Form into large patties and chill until you’re ready to cook.
- If you can, pop these puppies on the grill until done (4-5 minutes per side, until they reach an internal temperature of 165° F); otherwise, you could put these under the broiler in your oven, a grill pan on your stovetop, or just a frying pan. If desired, grill pineapple in last 5 minutes of cooking. Baste burgers with Teriyaki sauce during last two minutes of grilling. Spread buns with mayonnaise and a little more Teriyaki sauce. Enjoy!
Serving Suggestions
- Can I make these ahead of time? You could definitely prep and measure all of your patty ingredients, or even combine them and form the patties, up to a day ahead of time. Store, tightly covered, in the fridge and use a thermometer when cooking to ensure the burgers reach 165° F.
Serving Suggestions
What could go better with Hawaiian burgers than some Hawaiian Macaroni Salad? Memphis-Style Coleslaw, some simple chips, a side salad, or fruit platter would be great as well.
Did You Make This?
I’d love to hear from you! Snap a picture and tag me on Instagram, then come back and give this recipe a rating!
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Hawaiian Turkey Burgers
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 4 large burgers
Description
Sweet pineapple and teriyaki come together in these island-inspired Hawaiian Turkey Burgers. They are a fun way to mix things up on the grill!
Ingredients
- 1 pound lean ground turkey
- 1/2 cup (plus more if you need it) dry bread crumbs
- 1/2 cup red or green bell pepper, minced (about 1/2 medium bell pepper)
- 1/2 cup thinly sliced green onion
- 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh ginger root
- 1 small can pineapple slices; reserve juice
- 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
- Thick Teriyaki sauce (like Kikkoman or this recipe)
- Mayonnaise (optional, but very yummy!)
- 4 hamburger buns (you can use this recipe if you’re feeling ambitious)
Instructions
- Gently combine turkey, bread crumbs, bell pepper, green onion, ginger, 1/4 cup reserved juice from pineapple, and salt. Form into 4 deliciously large patties. Chill until ready to cook.
- Pop burgers on the grill until done (4-5 minutes per side, until they reach an internal temperature of 165° F); otherwise, you could put these under the broiler in your oven, a grill pan on your stovetop, or just a frying pan. If desired, grill pineapple in last 5 minutes of cooking. Baste burgers with Teriyaki sauce during last two minutes of grilling. Spread buns with mayonnaise and a little more Teriyaki sauce. Enjoy!
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
Questions & Reviews
I stumbled across your blog yesterday while looking for “healthy” ideas to cook some ground turkey. Usually i’m the type of girl that goes for the bag of Doritoes…Dorito’s? Doreetoes? Apparently this computer is telling me I can’t spell…anywho rather than potatoes. (Actually I don’t think potatoes are really healthy either but you catch my drift) I saw this recipe and I HAD to try it. Bad news is I had to settle for a dinner box of carbs that night because I didn’t have all the ingredients (I know i’m a diet newby it was eventually gonna happen lol) So TODAY I made them and they are sooo scrumpdiliumptious! (that’s pronounced scrump-dilly-um-shus) Definition: Heaven in a burger 🙂 You girls are amazing! I’m so glad I came across your blog! It’s definitely going to get me through my diet plan! <3
Oh and I used the homemade teriyaki and it’s to die for 🙂
Hi! Tried these tonight – so yummy! I grilled them & they stuck to the grill…just wonder what you might recommend to prevent the burgers from sticking? Perhaps, grill temp (hi, med, lo would be fine!) would make a difference in this department?
You could adjust the grill temp and you could also lightly brush the grill grate with a little bit of oil.
Hope that helps!
Kate
lol, someone made about nutritional info? ignorance is bliss I guess. I am happy the info is posted. I don’t diet but I don’t want to fill my body with garbage either.
I am making this tonight, hope it works out,looks great!
This is one of our new family favorites. I wanted to let you know of a substitution I made, turned out a masterpeice! I didn’t have bread crumbs on hand because I had used them all for the crispy coconut crusted chicken finger recipe I made last week. I had so much of the cocunut/crumb mixture left over afterwards, I decided to freeze it for next time I made the chicken.
You can already see where this is going, right? Yeah, I subbed those beauties in for the plain bread crumbs, and I cannot tell you what a beautiful flavor the coconut and curry powder added to these juicy burgers! A perfect blend with the pineapple on top – devine!
Thanks for all your inspirational recipes!
So these are in the pan as we speak and have completely fallen apart. Fail. What did I do wrong? I put in the correct amounts of everything. The only difference is my turkey meat was 90/10 instead of 93/7.
Try increasing the bread crumbs next time so they hold their shape better–even up to 1/4 cup. Hope that helps! 🙂
I really love this blog and appreciate you laides posting healthy delicious recipies. I am not dieting but love eating nutritious foods and appreciate your efforts in posting weight watchers points and calories. Please don’t let overly sensitive people prevent you from doing that!
My husband and I love these – so tasty! This time, I had extra mixture left (had to use up a 2lb. package of turkey) and thought, “I bet this would make a great meatloaf.” I was right! I just added pineapple tidbits to the mixture and poured a little teriyaki sauce to glaze the loaf, and voila! Hawaiian Meatloaf!
I love the Blog. I am especially excited for the Weight Watchers Points listed with the recipes. Please DON'T let anyone talk you out of putting them on. Thanks for a great Blog.
Hahaha, yeah, that would be 1/2 c.! 🙂 1/2 by itself doesn’t really do any good, does it? Thanks for calling me out on it! 🙂
Quick question – I am making these tonight and I don’t know how many bread crumbs to use. It doesn’t say the amount – and what kind of bread crumbs? They look fabulous!
I love recipes like these! I’m bookmarking this one!
Love your blog. So beautiful & cheery. Love this recipe too. Can't wait to try it! Thanks so much for so many wonderful treats.
Yum, these look really good. I think they’re going on my menu for next week. I LOVE LOVE LOVE that you’re posting WW points!
These look so good. I’m totally going to make them. Will they still taste yummo with extra lean hamburger meat? This may sound weird, but where we live, I don’t think I can find ground turkey close by and if I do, it will cost a million dollars. Also, thanks for posting the weight watcher stuff.
Kelly–for 60 people, I would probably 5x the recipe for the salad and 4x the recipe for the dressing. When I made the salad for a ton of people, I did all the prep work the day before–get bags of prewashed, chopped romaine if you can; if you can’t…
–Wash and chop the lettuce one head at a time and let one head drain while you chop the next one. Get the chopped lettuce as dry as you can with a bunch of paper towels and then put it in the gallon-sized ziploc bags.
–Make the dressing and keep it in a pitcher that has a lid and a pour spout
–Crumble the blue cheese; keep in a Ziploc bag
–Chop the apples up to a couple of hours before you have to go; as long as they’re in juice, they’ll be fine
–Caramelize the nuts the day before; same thing, Ziploc bag
When you get where you’re going, all you have to do is throw everything together and throw away the Ziploc bags. Oh, and if you’re making a bunch AND you have a Costco nearby, they have THE MOST delicious Gorgonzola cheese–it’s in light blue foil and sooooo delicious!!
I’ve never seen anyone “rubbed the wrong way” about WW points, but k…whatever.
I also LOVE the nutritional info on the food. Yes, I need to lose 10 lbs, but I’m not dieting, nor following ww. But I want to eat healthier to get my insides healthy as well. So when I see WW points and it’s low, I know it’s a pretty healthy food to consume. And since it’s on Best Bites, it’s definitly going to be GOOD. Not yucky diet food. 🙂
Keep up the amazing work ladies.
I think anyone could use a new yummy nutritious recipe. Whether you’re dieting or not, eating healthy makes you happy.
I’m really excited to try the recipes you have in store this month. Thanks Kate!
ha ha! Just because they are posting the WW points doesn’t mean you HAVE to go on a diet or that they think you *need* to. I for one think it’s great. And if I were on WW I would have died and gone to heaven finding this blog.
I was planning on using your yummy Candied Walnut Salad and honey red wine dressing for an activity with about 60 people, approx. how much does your recipe make? I have never made anything in bulk like that before, could you give me any suggestions? Thanks!
Meh, I don’t see what the big deal is. Health info can do anyone good! No matter what your situation is- dieting or not. And I think you are in the minority if you’re not dieting at all. Lucky!
Kate (and Sara)- this looks delicious! As usual, love the blog and all your recipes 🙂
Whoa, diplomatic panties? That sounds a little creepy. I hope you wash them regularly!
Glad to hear it’s only a temporary dip into the diet mentality.
Carry on! Carry on.
My reply would be to tell you to shut up if you don’t like something keep it to your self no one is interested in hearing your nasty comments. Thank You
Okay…putting on my diplomatic panties here…
Ann–We’re truly sorry if including nutritional information rubs you the wrong way. However, we’ve found through numerous emails that people really appreciate us including the nutritional information and WW points.
Normally, we don’t have the time or energy to calculate the nutritional information for all of our recipes (and really, do we want to know how many WW points are in Peppermint Candycane Brownies??), but we’ll continue to do it this month to help people (ourselves included) get back on track to eating right. This isn’t about “diet” food; rather, it’s about good, healthy food that we eat whether we’re dieting or not. We want to showcase some recipes that are healthy without being “diet” recipes.
We hope that this won’t cause you to stop reading altogether! If it really bothers you, please feel free to skip the last paragraph of any post–we won’t be hurt, we promise! We will be sad, however, if you stop coming by!
Ooooh, those look good! I’m kinda squeamish about mushing ground meat around with my hands, but I just might have to for these. I have a fresh pineapple that’s begging to be used and it looks like tomorrow might be warm enough to melt enough snow off my BBQ grill to actually do them outside. Bliss.
I love your blog, read it all the time, drool over your recipes and pictures. And I know that you are trying to be healthy and supportive of people who are dieting….
BUT (I know you could feel it coming)
Could you please please please stop putting the weight watchers points info on your posts? It’s really rubbing me the wrong way. Consider it a way to be supportive of those who are NOT dieting.
My mouth is watering just looking at that pineapple. YUM!
I’ve never made a turkey burger for my family, but i think I could make this and they’ed be happy with it. Thanks!
Aw, I feel so special!!! I had no idea any of you guys even tried these. Well, I’m glad you like them enough to share the recipe here…they ARE yummy!
These look seriously awesome! I would totally love these, yum!!
Well, since I like burgers, but only if I make them myself (no fast food here), then this is on the list for the weekend grill’er… Thanks!