Pizza Burgers! A 4 Ingredient Dinner!

Hello all! I am back with an original recipe today. Well, sort of original. When I was younger, we ate these pizza burgers all the time, and I had completely forgotten about them until I was asking Mama LOC for ideas for dinners. This is an incredibly easy dinner, few ingredients, and relatively low cost too! As for healthy... well, it's probably not up there with the healthiest dinners out there, but it is good!

For pizza burgers, we'll need:
• A package of hamburgers buns (We use 4 buns, top and bottom for a total of 8 "pizza crusts".)
• A can/jar of pizza sauce. I did not happen to look, but I think my can was in the 12-15 oz range.
• About 1/2-1 cup of mozzarella cheese or cheese of your choice (a good recipe to use what you've got!)
• 1 lb of hamburger/ground beef, thawed

And that's it! How easy is that? A 4 ingredient recipe to the rescue. (Except for some non-stick spray, I suppose. You'll probably want that.) A full recipe without pictures is posted below, as always.

To start out, arrange your hamburger buns on a cookie sheet with a little bit of nonstick spray. Preheat your oven to 350.

 Start browning your ground beef.

When your ground beef is completely browned (but not over-browned... because you're going to keep cooking it), add your pizza sauce.

 A little bit about my pizza sauce of choice: I <3 Chef Boyardee pizza sauce (and no, I'm not getting perked or anything to say that, haha). We grew up on this pizza sauce because I was (and still kinda am) the pickiest eater when it comes to sauce, and I didn't want anything to do with chunks in the sauce. So this stuff tastes awesome, and is completely liquid. The sad part is that I can only find it at one store around here! But I guess one store is all I need, better than no stores. :)

My freshly broken-into can. Yum! Sorry about the hat, chef.

Back to the recipe... mix in the sauce well with the meat. Cooking at about a medium high heat, you'll want the sauce to boil but not burn, so you'll have to keep moving it around quite a bit. You're aiming for the sauce to cook into the meat and reduce so that in my case, the sauce is not so incredibly liquid-y when you go to put it on the buns. Soggy buns are not what we're aiming for. Put your lid on your pan to help it cook down.

After about 10 or so minutes for me, my sauce had reduced enough and soaked in enough to be just perfect.

Moving back to the buns, scoop out your meat onto the buns equally. Add a healthy dose of mozzarella cheese to each. Try to avoid getting a ton of excess cheese on the pan - it'll just burn and be unfun to clean off after this meal. Your oven should be preheated by this time, so go ahead and stick the pan in the oven for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them though - depending on cookie sheet used (dark, light), all ovens being slightly different, etc, you don't want to end up with overdone pizza burgers.

And here is the final step: Enjoy! Your bun should be ever so slightly toasted and the cheese should be just melted.

Pizza Burgers

Ingredients

• 8 count package of hamburger buns (you'll use four buns for a total of 8 pizza crusts.)
• A 12-15 oz can/jar of pizza sauce.
• About 1/2-1 cup of mozzarella cheese or cheese of your choic
• 1 lb of hamburger/ground beef, thawed

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.
1) Arrange hamburger buns, separated into 8 onto a cookie sheet coated with nonstick spray.
2) Brown ground beef in pan until just browned, then add can of pizza sauce to browned meat.
3) Cover and cook down the sauce until most is absorbed, about 5-10 minutes.
4) Scoop sauced meat onto burger buns in equal amounts
5) Sprinkle cheese atop each pizza burger
6) Place in oven for 10 minutes at 350, watching to avoid burn.
7) Burger buns should be slightly toasted and cheese should be melted when complete. Enjoy!

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Thanks for following along! Hope you enjoy this easy meal! :)