Tonight’s dinner was a tasty and quick to whip up Ground Turkey Ragu. Keeping it real – this weekend was insanely busy! Between the launch of Fearlessly Fit & Free and a New Year’s Kick Off Conference through my wellness company I was so busy that I didn’t have time to fit in our usual meal prep! This meant no grocery shopping today either so we had to get creative with what we were going to eat tonight.
Ben was hesitant on the 30 different Pinterest dinners challenge when I first broached the idea with him because he is a huge spaghetti and meatballs fan. Part of the deal was that we had to include some simpler dinners for him to enjoy. When we started looking through the fridge to see what could inspire us, Ben thought we should make something with the ground turkey that we had in the freezer. Naturally his mind went straight to pasta! Unfortunately it was already 3pm so we needed to defrost quick!
I started poking around on Pinterest and found a link for a Quick Turkey Ragu. The word QUICK really caught my attention. Because today was also pretty busy, I did not even start cooking dinner until almost 9pm! Quick was necessary! Full disclosure – I had every intention of following this recipe exactly as is and then started getting creative. I will put my version of the recipe at the end!
There was some white onion left from one of our dinners this week, along with a zucchini, and a red pepper that I picked up for last night’s dinner and totally forgot to use. Thankfully, I found a jar of red sauce that I had also picked up last week for stuffed shells that didn’t get used either. We were in business!
I threw some oil, minced garlic, and onions in a pan to sauté while getting the water boiling for the spaghetti. After a couple of minutes I added the ground turkey to the pan (we used about a 1/3 of our package but probably could have done more). I also skipped out on the red wine because I’m a white wine drinker, not a bottle of red to be found here. I also passed on the red chili flakes because we don’t have those either.
When Ben and I went to Westchester to hunker down in quarantine last year, his brother-in-law made a ragu quite often, including our first night there! He typically adds whatever veggies her has left in the fridge which made me confident in adding the veggies we had in our fridge. I threw a zucchini, the red pepper, and a couple handful of chopped carrots because we always have those in the house (Ben is ADDICTED).
After everything was in the frying pan and the veggies looked cooked through I added in the sauce and let it cook for an extra 3-4 minutes. Once the spaghetti was ready, we left each in a separate pan so that the leftover spaghetti would not dry out all of the sauce in the fridge. We topped with some parm and called it a day! I was too exhausted to even remember the basil for this one.
Overall Rating: This Group Turkey Ragu was pretty good! Nothing too exciting, but we would definitely eat it again if we wanted some variety from our typical spaghetti and meatballs.
Link to Original Recipe: https://www.panningtheglobe.com/quick-turkey-ragu/
xoxo
Krysta
PS – my version of the recipe:
Ingredients – minced garlic, medium sized onion, sauce of choice, 1/2 pound of ground turkey, beef, or chicken, veggies of your choosing (we did 1 large zucchini, 1 red pepper, and 2 handfuls of carrots), Parmesan cheese, and fresh Basil
- Cook a couple spoonfuls of minced garlic and half of a medium sized onion in a frying pan with a little bit of oil. After a few minutes add in the Ground Turkey and break it up with a wooden spoon. Make pasta of choice in a separate pan
- Cut up the veggies(anything you have in your fridge) and add to ground meat, onion, and garlic mixture once the meat has browned. Let cook until veggies are almost all the way cooked (about 7 minutes)
- Add a full jar of sauce to the skillet and let simmer
- Once sauce is done, mix in with pasta and top with fresh Parmesan cheese and Basil!
