Well, hello October. How did you get here so fast?
Let me catch you up really quickly on what's been happening in the last two-ish months.
His name is Oberon, or Obie for short, and he has totally taken over our lives. It turns out, puppies require a lot of work. And all the attention.
Let's be real.... I have been cooking. I was catching up with a friend and he asked if I was still baking regularly. I told him no..... Thirty seconds later, I retracted my statement.
I realized I'd made a batch of croissants and chocolate chip cookies that very week. I've been slowly working on recent (and not so recent) requests from the Ideas Post series, including the hanger steak salad, Hediye's breakfast, fried grains with kimchi, and charred broccoli salad. All of them need more work, except the broccoli salad. I've made three cakes, pancakes, multiple loaves of bread, several slabs of focaccia. Plus, I've been leaning on old favorites, including caramelized breakfast pork, chile verde, pumpkin turkey chili, and this Thai ground turkey and veggie bowl.
It's super fast to make, one-pot only, packed with punchy flavor, healthy-ish and low carb, and easily built into whatever bowl food you're in the mood for eating.
Adapted from: Light and Healthy 2010, from America's Test Kitchen
Ingredients
- ⅓ pound crimini mushrooms chopped in quarters
- 1-2 Thai chili destemmed, deseeded, and julienned
- ⅔ large red bell pepper sliced into ½" chunks
- 4-6 ounces baby spinach roughly chopped or julienned
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 lb 93% lean ground turkey or ground chicken
Thai-style Sauce
- 3 tablespoons fish sauce
- 3 tablespoons lime juice from about 3-5 limes
- 2 tablespoons lime zest from about 3-5 limes
- 1 ½ tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
To serve (optional; choose one of the following)
- 3-4 medium zucchini spiralized
- 1 head butter lettuce washed, spun dry, separated into individual leaves
- 1-2 cups brown or white rice cooked
Instructions
Vegetable prep
- Clean and quarter the mushrooms; set aside into a bowl. Destem and deseed the Thai pepper(s) then chop into slivers; add to the mushrooms. Destem and deseed the bell pepper then chop into ½" pieces; set aside separately from the mushrooms. Roughly chop the spinach, set aside in separate bowl.
Thai-style sauce
- In a small bowl, whisk together the fish sauce, lime juice, lime zest, brown sugar, and cornstarch.
Filling
- Place a large saute pan, wok, or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the olive oil, then the ground turkey, using a wooden spoon to break the single block of ground turkey into pieces. Continue cooking the turkey until no longer pink, stirring only occasionally to further break up into bite-sized chunks.
- Add the chopped Thai chile(s) and quartered mushrooms, then cook until the mushrooms soften, about 5-8 minutes more. Whisk the Thai-style sauce to redistribute the cornstarch, then pour into the pan and stir to distribute. The heat should be high enough that the sauce begins bubbling in about 30-60 seconds.
- Add the chopped bell pepper* to the pan, stir to distribute, then add the juilenned spinach to wilt. Remove from the heat and serve.
- Serve the turkey mixture with spiralized zucchini noodles, brown rice, or lettuce leaves for lettuce wrap assembly.
