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Category Archives: Turkey
This Week’s Lunch: Turkey Black Bean Chili
A couple of months ago, I decided that I’d test out a new way of dealing with lunch. Throughout my professional career I’ve gone back and forth with bringing lunch and eating out. Over the past year, I’ve gone mostly in the direction of the latter. It gets expensive to eat out all of the time and can be less than healthy. My plan was to start making one big entree on Sunday and portion it out for the week.
This has been one of the best ideas I’ve had in a long time and has stuck as a new habit. I’m saving money and eating better. It takes a couple of hours on my Sunday, but it’s time well spent.
This week, I made this turkey black bean chili perfect for these cold winter days.
Turkey Black Bean Chili
All of our lunches packed up for the week!
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 medium onion, diced small
4 poblano peppers, diced small
3 jalapeno peppers, diced small
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can tomato paste
6 tbsp chili powder
3 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp smoked paprika
1 tbsp ancho chili powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
2 lbs. ground turkey
1 lbs. dried black beans, soaked overnight
1, 10 oz. can diced tomatoes
2 medium zucchinis, diced small
12 oz. dark beer
4 cups chicken stock
In a large pot, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the onions, peppers, and garlic. Cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes until they get soft.
Add the tomato paste and spices and stir together. Everything will combine together and look like a paste. Stir in the ground turkey and break it up.
Add the beans, tomatoes, zucchini, beer, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil and lower to a simmer. Simmer for 2-4 hours until the black beans are soft.
Posted in Comfort Food, Healthy, Main Dish, Meat, Recipe, Soup, Turkey
2 Comments
Battle Thanksgiving is Ovah!
Sean the Taster and I just had leftovers for lunch and I think they might have been better the second time around. Thanksgiving was a success.
And it was actually a pretty easy day of cooking. I prepped all my vegetables the day before and stored them in ziplock bags in the fridge — so, just two hours before the turducken was finished cooking I just took them out and applied heat and things worked out easily.
Overall, dinner was tasty and the company was great. And that’s really what Thanksgiving is about: good food with good people.
The final menu, aside from the turducken, included the following:
Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Bacon
Caramelized Pearl Onions
Andouille & Crawfish Potato Casserole
Roasted Butternut Squash
Smashed Carrots and Turnip
Cranberry Champagne Coolers
Pumpkin Bread Pudding
Of course, my camera batteries ran out so I didn’t get any pictures, however, everyone at the table had seconds, so it must have been good.
How was the turducken? I was disappointed in the turducken. The white meat turkey was on the dry side which is never a good thing in a turkey. The bird(s) were also not as easy to slice as I thought it would be. Since there was a good amount of rice and sausage in the cornbread stuffing, the turducken didn’t slice into neat little rounds of turkey, duck, chicken, and stuffing. It fell apart and made it hard to see which meat you were getting.
The flavor was good, but I think we’ll probably stick to a brined turkey next year. And, we can have duck and chicken on their own. I mean, really, the best part of duck is it’s crispy skin — and in the turducken, you don’t get no duck skin.
Stay tuned for Turkey Day recipes.
Stuffed Turkey Rouladinis
I went to the store last week to get some things for dinner and I noticed a package of turkey “chops” which looked like thin boneless pork chops. I like cooking with turkey because it’s so lean but it’s a reprieve from eating chicken constantly.
After some thinking, I decided that I would make some sort of individual stuffed turkey chops — or rouladini as I call them since they are mini roulades and hey, if Rachael Ray can make up cutesy names for her recipes, so can I!
I chose to toss some toasted almonds and cranberries into my stuffing, but the great thing about stuffing is that you can put just about anything in the pan with some chicken broth and toasted bread and make it your own recipe.
I think this would also work well with pounded boneless porkchops or even pounded out chicken breasts (if you must go the boring route.)
Stuffed Turkey Rouladinis
4, 4 oz. turkey “chops”, boneless pork chops, or chicken breast fillets
1/4 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup dried cranberries, roughly chopped
1/2 cup onion, roughly diced small
1/2 cup carrot, roughly diced small
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. dried sage
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1/2 tsp. dried oregeno
salt
pepper
2 slices bread, toasted (whatever you got on hand) and cut into 1/2 cubes
1/2 cup chicken broth
4 tbsp. goat cheese
1 tsp. butter
Preheat the oven to 400.
Pound your turkey, pork, or chicken breast into thin rounds (about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick). Season each side with a pinch of salt and several grinds of black pepper. Set aside.
Heat a medium frying pan and add the sliced almonds. Stir occassionaly until the almonds start to get lightly brown and toasted. Set aside.
Put the frying pan back on the heat and add 1 tsp. of olive oil. Add the onions and saute them over medium high heat until they get translucent and lightly browned about 2 minutes. Add the carrot and cook for another 2 minutes. Add a pinch of salt, several grinds of black pepper, sage, thyme and oregeno.
Add the toasted bread, almonds, and dried cranberries. Stir to combine. Add as much chicken broth as needed to so the bread soaks up the water, but does not make the mixture soupy. Stir the stuffing until all of the broth has been soaked up and the ingredients are well mixed together. Remove stuffing from the pan (and give it a quick cleaning — you’ll use it again in a minute!)
To stuff, spread one tablespoon of goat cheese in a line in the center of the round of turkey (pork or chicken). Take about 1/4 of the stuffing mixture and spread it over the goat cheese. Then roll into a tight cylander so there’s a seam at the bottom and none of the stuffing is leaking out of the bottom.
Heat your pan and add the butter and the last tsp. of olive oil. When the butter melts, put the rouladinis into the pan seam side down. This will help seal the seam and make it easier to flip.
Brown the bottom of the rouladini for about two minutes or until golden brown. Using tongs, flip over and cook for another 2 minutes.
Move the pan into the oven for another 8 – 10 minutes or until the meat is cooked through. This shouldn’t take too long since it’s pretty thin and your oven is at 400 (right?!)
Serve with veggies and mashed potatoes and this meal becomes a thanksgiving dinner you can have any night of the week!
Vegetable Lasagna Alfredo
I’m not sure where I got the idea for this recipe, but I’ve been making it in various forms for five years or so. At first, I used jarred alfredo sauce for the white, cheesy sauce that takes place of tomato sauce. But I’ve in the past couple of years, I’ve taken to making my own bechemal sauce rather than the jarred alfredo sauce. I’ve also taken to adding sweet, Italian turkey sausage in the vegetable mix.
This recipe takes a little bit of time — you have to saute the vegetables and sausage, make the bechamel sauce, make the ricotta mixture, and boil the lasagna noodles all separately. Then the lasagna must be assembled and baked!
It’s worth it. Especially since this will make a whole pan of lasagna and will most likely feed you for days — unless of course you’re making for a crowds. Then, all bets are off as I’m sure someone’s going to want seconds.
Preheat the oven to 450.
Bechamel Sauce
1 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
1 1/2 cups 2% milk
1/4 large onion, cut into large chunks
3 cloves garlic, smashed and peeled
1 tbsp. whole pepper corns
3 tbsp. unsalted butter
3 tbsp. flour
1/2 cup shredded aged provelone cheese
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
salt
pepper
Combine chicken or vegetable broth and milk together in a large, microwavable container. Put the onion, garlic, and peppercorns into the liquid. Put this in the microwave for three minutes — stopping after each minute to stir. Set aside.
Melt the butter in a medium pot. Whisk in the flour and cook on medium heat for 2-3 minutes in order to cook the flour (you’re making a roux!) Strain the liquid into the pot with the butter and flour. Toss the onion, garlic, and peppercorns — they’ve given all they can. Slowly bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Your milk and broth will start to get thick.
Once the sauce gets thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon, stir in the cheeses. Add a couple of pinches of salt and about 10 grinds of freshly cracked pepper. Taste and add more salt and pepper if neccessary.
Ricotta Mixture
24 oz part-skim ricotta cheese
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 tbsp. dried oregeno
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 pinch salt
10-15 grinds fresh black pepper
1 egg, beaten
Mix all of the ingredients together until combined.
Turkey Sausage and Vegetables
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 large onion, diced small
10 crimini or baby bella mushrooms, sliced
8 oz. sweet turkey sausage (about three sausages)
1 red pepper, diced into 1/2 inch chunks
1 small zucchini, sliced
1 small summer squash, sliced
salt
pepper
Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan. Add the onion and a pinch of salt. Let sweat for 1-2 minutes. Add mushrooms and cook for 1 minute. Add sausage, breaking it up in the pan so it resembles ground meat. Let the sausage brown. Since we’re using lean turkey sausage, you don’t need to drain this. Add the red pepper, zucchini, and summer squash. Add salt and pepper to taste. Cook until vegetables are soft but still al dente.
Lasagna Noodles
1 package lasagna noodles.
Other stuff
1 package shredded mozzerella
grated parmesan cheese
grated provelone cheese
Bring a gallon of water and a few large pinches of salt to a boil. Add lasagna noodles. Cook for about 6-7 minutes. They will be more al dente than pasta you’d serve without cooking again, but still able to be eaten (you’ll have extra that you’ll want to dip into the extra bechamel sauce — cook’s treat.)
Assembling
Use a 9x13ish baking dish (mine is a little smaller than that, but you know, just use what you have.) Pour some bechamel sauce on the bottom (so the noodles don’t stick.) Put one layer of lasagna noodles into the pan — you’ll probably get about three noodles lengthwise.
Spread 1/3 of the ricotta mixture over the noodles. Spread 1/3 of the sausage and vegetable misture over the ricotta. Pour a little less than 1/3 of the bechamel sauce over the vegetables. Sprinkle 1/3 of the mozzerella cheese over the bechamel. Add another layer of noodles, sausage, bechamel, and mozzerella. You’ll get three layers in total. The last layer should be a layer of noodles covered in the rest of your bechamel sauce (minus whatever the cook is going to snack on while the lasagna is in the oven.) Finally, sprinkle some grated parmesan and grated provelone cheese on the top.
Cooking
Cover your lasagna pan loosely with foil. Put into the oven for about 45 minutes. You want the final internal temperature of the lasagna to be 165. When the lasagna is at about 160, take off the foil and cook for 5-10 minutes to finish and brown the cheese on the top.
Once it’s finished, if you can stand to wait, let the lasagna sit for 10-15 minutes to set. This will make it much easier to cut.