Hamburger Calzone

This recipe was born out of the ever increasing clutter I find in my refrigerator, freezer and pantry.  I don't know how or why this clutter grows; I cook every night.  I realize I do grocery shop a lot, but I use almost every thing I get.  Occasionally, I will have a portion of meat that was a bit more than I needed (like tonight's ground beef) and I will seal it and freeze it for future uses, but I am constantly astounded at the overflow of ingredients.  Anyways, rant over, this is why I just went in there and started using things to get this recipe.  I am a little embarrassed to say I loved it, not because it was bad, but it tasted suspiciously like a McDonald's cheeseburger.  I have a secret love of McDonald's.  When I am eating it, I think this really is garbage, but my mom craved them when she was pregnant with me and I think it is just something written in to my genes that when I see a McDonald's commercial, I secretly want some.  Now I am proud that I was able to approximate the McDonald's flavor but, get this, using real food!  It was not identical, but it was in the ballpark flavor wise.  I didn't really have a plan going in to the kitchen other than I needed to use up the extra pizza dough I had and that I really should get some of the meat out of the freezer.  Dough make me think of calzone, the ground beef made me think of burgers and the following was what my mind spat out.  We all liked it and it cleaned up a lot of ingredients laying around.  I didn't want the ketchup or mayo inside because I was afraid that it would get soggy, so I mixed them together and called it a dipping sauce that it did really need.  You can adjust the sauce to fit you personal tastes.  I you need mustard or hate mayo you can change it up, but I recommend something.



Hamburger Calzone

1/2 onion, chopped
15 dill pickle chops, chopped
3 Sun Dried Tomatoes, patted dry and finely chopped
1/2 lb ground beef
Salt
4 oz cheddar, shredded
4 oz mozzarella,shredded
1/2 tbsp unsalted butter (if needed)
1/4 c ketchup
1/4 c mayonnaise
1 lb pizza dough

Put a pizza stone on the lowest shelf in your oven and preheat to 500 degeres
Flatten your ground beef in to a 1/4" layer and season with a bit of salt
Break off "slider" size peices of meat.  (They don't need to be uniform in size but uniform thickness is best)
Cook the "burgers" over medium heat in a skillet unitl cooked trhough and browned on both sides (for me that was about 90 seconds each side)
Remove cooked "burgers" to a plate with at slotted spatuala
finish off all the patties this way
If the pan is mostly dry, add the optional butter
Saute the onion unitl soft (about 5 minutes)
Add the sundried tomato and stir
Add the pickle and stir
Cook until heated though and any the mixture is mostly dry
Take off the heat to cool while you roll out the dough
Roll out he dough to a thin large circle (mine was about 18" diameter)
Leaving a 3/4' border, crumble the beef over the bottom half of the dough
Top the meat with the onion mixture evenly
Top that with both the cheeses evenly
Fold over the dough and crimp the edges and poke some holes on top
Carefully remove the hot pizza stone from the oven.
Carefully transfer the "calzone" to the hot stone and return to the oven
Bake at 500 for 7-10 minutes or until slightly browned and heated through
Transfer to a cutting board and let rest 10 minutes.