Category: ground turkey/beef

Easy Basic Turkey Meatloaf

I haven’t cooked much in the past few months, that’s for sure. So when I felt ready to dive back in, I wanted something easy that I knew would get approval from both the hubs and the boy. I had some ground turkey that my husband picked up a few days ago and it was just waiting for me to portion it out for the freezer.  Instead, I took 2 lbs of it and made this super easy turkey meatloaf.

I’m so glad I did. It turned out surprisingly delicious!  I say “surprisingly” because it’s just so easy, with no frills whatsoever. I made it exactly as called for in the original recipe except that next time I’d add half the amount of onion. It was a bit too much for us.

I highly suggest you go visit Sweet Treats and More for some more awesome recipes. I’m really glad I discovered her.

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Easy Basic Turkey Meatloaf

Ingredients

  • 2 lbs ground turkey
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 onion, finely chopped
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1-1/4 cup dried bread crumbs
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 3 Tbsp brown sugar
  • 3 Tbsp prepared mustard
  • 1/3 cup ketchup

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.
  2. In a large bowl combine the turkey, egg, onion, milk, bread crumbs, and salt and pepper (it's easiest to use your hands to combine it).
  3. Using your hands form the meat mixture into a loaf and place in a lightly greased 9x13 in baking dish. Sprinkle top with another dash of salt and pepper.
  4. In a separate bowl combine brown sugar, mustard and ketchup. Pour over the top of the meatloaf, spreading evenly. Bake for about one hour or until cooked through.
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My Favorite Turkey Chili Recipe

Hi. Remember me? I used to blog here a long time ago and then I fell off the face of the earth, except for my weekly linky party? Yeah, sorry about that.

But I’m here now, and I have a great turkey chili recipe for you. My chili’s never exactly the same because I didn’t really have a recipe (until now). Sometimes I’ll throw in some extra veggies I have laying around, like zucchini or carrots. Sometimes I’ll use kidney beans, or garbanzo beans, or just black beans.  Sometimes I’ll add corn.  But this is how I made it this time, and it turned out perfect!

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The Best Turkey Chili EVER

Ingredients

  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 lb ground turkey
  • 1 15-oz can cannelini beans, drained (not rinsed)
  • 1 15-oz can black beans, drained (not rinsed)
  • 1 15-oz can diced tomatoes
  • 1 packet taco seasoning
  • 1 Tbsp chili powder

Instructions

  1. Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven.
  2. Add onion and cook 5 minutes, until slightly soft. Add garlic and ground turkey and cook until almost brown.
  3. Add taco seasoning and chili powder to meat mixture and cook for 3 minutes. Add beans and tomatoes and simmer until most of the liquid is evaporated, about 20 minutes.
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This recipe’s so super easy, and reheats wonderfully. It’s great topped with some shredded cheddar cheese and cornbread. Enjoy!

Stuffed Squash

CSA

One of my first conversations with my mother-in-law was about my husband’s complete disgust by a recipe she made once for zucchini boats.  I’d never had one, and couldn’t imagine what was so disgusting about it, but ever since then I’ve been afraid of stuffing a squash for fear of my husband being traumatized even further.  But with the onslaught of squash from my CSA, I decided to throw caution to the wind.

Before I get to my recipe for stuffed pattypan squash, here’s what we got in our CSA share this week.

I’d heard stories about CSAs only giving vegetables, but so far I’ve been really happy with the mix of veggies and fruits.  Can’t wait to sink my teeth into those peaches!  I’m so glad I decided to do a CSA with Great Country Farms this year.  Worth every penny.

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Stuffed Squash

Stuffed Squash

Ingredients

  • 1 lb ground turkey
  • 1 green onion bulb, diced
  • 1 small zucchini, diced
  • 1 small yellow squash, diced
  • 2 pattypan squash
  • 1/2 cup pasta sauce (or more as needed)
  • 1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 1/2 cup rice

Instructions

  1. Cook rice according to package directions.
  2. While rice is cooking, boil pattypan squash for 15-20 minutes, or until slightly tender.
  3. Remove squash from pot and allow to cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
  4. In a large pan, brown the ground turkey with the onion, then add the zucchini and yellow squash. Cook for a few minutes and then add the pasta sauce and rice. The mixture should not be too liquid but should hold together fairly well. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  5. Cut a circle in the top of the pattypan squash, and then scoop out the insides, leaving a 1/2-inch thick skin.
  6. Fill the squash with the meat mixture. Sprinkle with mozzarella and bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.
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http://www.alittlenosh.net/2012/07/stuffed-squash/

Shells with Meat Sauce

**Don’t forget to enter my Crunchmaster giveaway!**

This isn’t a recipe so much as an idea for a seriously quick dinner that everyone seems to love.  My son, who never finishes what’s on his plate on a school night (it’s my theory that he gets a late snack at school), gobbled this up.  No questions about what it was, what kind of sauce, etc. that he normally asks.  Just stuffing his face.  To me, that’s a success.

Ingredients:

Directions:

  1. Cook noodles according to package directions.
  2. Brown ground turkey in a large skillet over medium heat until no pink remains.  Stir pasta sauce into ground turkey and simmer while your noodles are cooking.
  3. Drain noodles, and toss with meat sauce.  Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top.

That’s it.  Not fancy but delicious, filling, and cheap.  Serve with a side of broccoli or a large salad and you’re good to go.

In other news, I just found out about this Family Cookbook Project site. My mom made us cookbooks years ago, and recently she’s been working on ones for my nephew and niece. Family cookbooks are awesome…I’d love to have one from my husband’s family (hint hint).  Full disclosure: This is an affiliate link and I get a small cut of the proceeds.  But that doesn’t negate the fact that I think it’s a great gift to give for the holidays.

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Turkey Sloppy Joes–Secret Recipe Club

It’s time for the Secret Recipe Club reveal day!  One of my favorite days of the month.  It’s always so fun to see who got your blog, and what they made from it.  (In case you’re not aware, the Secret Recipe Club is sort of like a Secret Santa, but with food blogs.  You get randomly assigned a blog and you choose a recipe from that blog to make, and everyone reveals their recipes on the same day.  So fun.)

This month my assigned blog was The Food of Love.  Great name, and it really fits Arlene’s blog focus.  She makes true comfort food from the heart…rustic Italian meals.  Not all of her recipes are Italian, but many of them are, and they all look fantastic.  Of course, given that I’m trying to watch my weight, I had my work cut out for me trying to pick a recipe that I could either make over into a healthy one (which I’m not always so great at), or find one that I could make as-is.

I had a few I was trying to choose from (Crispy Spicy Chicken Drumsticks, Fettucine Alfredo, and One Pan Oven-Roasted Chicken Feast) but I chose to make her Beef and Mushroom Sloppy Joes.  Why’d I choose that one?  Well, I went to the store not really knowing which one I was going to make, but when I got to the produce section, organic baby bella mushrooms were on sale for cheaper than the regular ones.  It was a sign from above that I should make this recipe.

This recipe is supposed to be 4 servings (with the 12 oz of sirloin), but my version easily made at least 6 servings.  There was a LOT of food.  Those mushrooms really stretch the ground turkey, and keep the points super low.  Oh, and can we talk about how cute those baby sweet peppers are?  Roni from Green Lite Bites sends them in her son’s lunchbox and he devours them so I had high hopes for my little guy.  No such luck.  I’ll keep trying, though!

I made a few changes from the original, so my version is below.  I substituted ground turkey (and I used a pound of it rather than the 12 oz ground sirloin her recipe calls for), and I left out the hot sauce because I’m a total sissy.  But I did add some barbeque sauce and a bit of sugar to cut the acid.  I felt like it really needed it.  Probably because I had to use balsamic vinegar instead of the red wine vinegar.  I thought I had red wine vinegar in the fridge but I was wrong.  Oops.

Turkey and Mushroom Sloppy Joes


Ingredients:

  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 lb ground turkey
  • 2 8-oz packages baby bella mushrooms
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1/2 cup tomato paste
  • 1 tsp dried oregano
  • 2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
  • 2 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 Tbsp barbeque sauce
  • 1 Tbsp sugar
  • salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

  1. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat and add the oil, swirling to coat.  Add the ground turkey and cook until browned, making sure to crumble into small pieces.
  2. While the turkey cooks, finely chop your mushrooms.  (The original recipe suggests you put them in a food processor and pulse 10 times, but I just cut mine like the Swedish Chef.)
  3. Add the mushrooms, onion, and garlic to the turkey and cook until onion is soft, about 5 minutes.
  4. Add the tomato paste, oregano, vinegar, and Worcestershire sauce and cook about 5 minutes more, until mushrooms are tender and liquid evaporates.  Stir in salt, pepper, barbeque sauce, and sugar, all to taste.

I served this on our favorite sandwich thins, but put them in the toaster first so they didn’t get too soggy once the meat was piled on.  I’m really glad my husband suggested doing that because texture-wise it was nice to have that bit of crunch in the bread to stand up to the sloppy meat mixture.

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