Turkey Thing is one of those skillet meals where you just throw a bunch of stuff in a pan and hope for the best. I started it when fresh out of college and poor as Bean Thing, so this is just a variant. Here is the “recipe”, such that it is. It’s a base and then a bunch of optional additions, and you can add some or all of them depending on what you have on hand and your preferences.
1. Pick your base, either some ground meat or some beans (canned or cooked from dry) or lentils. Whatever your base is determines the type of Thing you have: Turkey Thing, Bean Thing, Beef Thing, etc.
2. Optional ingredients: fresh vegetables. What do you have that’s a fresh vegetable that you could chop up and stir fry in a skillet? Use it! Chop it up and then stir fry it in a pan with a little oil. Set aside when not quite the desired tenderness. I used zucchini tonight.
3. Base ingredient: put your ground meat in the skillet and cook until no longer pink. If you are using beans, just heat them up a little. Add the vegetables (if any) back in here or at whatever later step you desire, but before the spices.
4. Optional ingredients: frozen vegetables. Got something in your freezer? Toss it into the skillet and stir fry it. I used some frozen corn, frozen chopped onions, and frozen pepper strips.
5. Optional ingredients: more beans! Canned or cooked from dry. Pinto, kidney, black beans, whatever. I used black beans tonight. Probably want to drain and rinse them.
6. Optional ingredients: canned tomatoes. Whatever you have, diced, whole, crushed, sauce, heck do pizza sauce or pasta sauce if it’s what you have and it seems like it might work! I used a can of Rotel diced tomatoes and half a can of leftover tomato paste.
7. Optional ingredients: spices. At the least do some salt and pepper or it’ll be bland. You can Google things like “spice mix for Italian food” and substitute your cuisine to get ideas of things that go together. Don’t have spices? I just used a packet of taco seasoning tonight.
8. Optional ingredients: condiments! Depending on what vibe you have going on you might want to add some condiments. Things like hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce. You have to be a bit careful to make sure it matches what you’ve used elsewhere or it could get weird! I skipped condiments tonight.
9. Optional ingredients: grains! If you want to bulk it up you can add in some rice or quinoa or farro or whatever. Or maybe you want to go with a pasta instead. Cook it first and then either mix it on, or serve your Thing over it. I skipped this tonight.
10. Optional ingredients: cheese! I love cheese so I always put some shredded cheese or something similar over meals. If you like cheese there are tons of options here. If you’re feeling fancy you could add it to the pan and then (assuming it’s oven safe) put it under the broiler to brown.
Serving suggestions: serve it on its own, over rice or quinoa, over a potato, in a tortilla, with some naan bread, whatever you like.
It’s a good way to use up odds and ends in the kitchen and is usually reasonably cheap. I’ve found it freezes well as leftovers. I usually freeze individual servings and take them out the night before to thaw some, then microwave.
by rabidstoat
2 Comments
I like this thing meal!
Great recipe OP! This is how most home cooking should be, most of the time. This is how I cook most of the time and it infuriates my friends every time I try to describe how I made something lol
I know I should be doing a better job of creating replicable and quantitative recipes now that I have a food blog but it’s just not what authentically happens in the kitchen