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Monday, April 27, 2015

My First Ever Turkey Chili

So we are trying to eat healthier in our house. This weeks dinner consisted of baked pecan crusted chicken (thanks to my wonderful friend for bringing it over) grilled pork chops and lots and lots of veggies. While grocery shopping with the hubby I picked up a pound of ground turkey and he cringed.
He warned me of "tricking" him into eating ground turkey and how it has no flavor blah blah blah. And I said "challenge accepted my friend"
So I searched Pinterest for a good turkey chili recipe and when all was said and done I ended up doing my own thing.
I picked up a pack of chili seasoning, usually with chili I season it on my own but in order to know exactly the calories, fat and carbs I picked up the seasoning pack. It worked out well because I was able to scan everything into MyFitnessPal app- which is the best FREE app to keep track of what you're eating. Plus the fact that you can scan in foods and build recipes makes life so easy. 
So here we go....
The Cast Of Characters

I sprayed the Dutch oven with Pam (cut down the oil factor right there)
I added chopped onions, chopped green peppers, and garlic. Let those sweat out a bit and then added in the ground turkey. Besides the fact that the meat wasn't super greasy, the only different I noticed was that the meat was softer than ground beef. Not a big deal...
Once the turkey was cooked I added in the seasoning packet, and let it cook for a minute or two- really letting the seasoning get in there.
Now for the dumping...
A can of reduced sodium kidney beans, can of reduced sodium stewed tomatoes, and a can of tomato paste. Which I used a new technique, I saw on TV, where you take the lid off the top and bottom of the tomato paste can. Then you use the metal lid from the top to push all the paste into the pan- super amazing you get all the tomato paste out.
Yummy Yummy
Anyways, get all that in there and add a cup of water or so just to thin it out. And that's it- I let it cook on low for about an hour. You could cook it less than that, like 15 min if you are pressed for time. But I liked the fact that I let it simmer for a while, and the stewed tomatoes broke down and made the sauce rich and tomatoey.

The verdict:

Husband loved it, just needed some more heat he said. So have some hot sauce on hand. I do agree- it could use some heat. But I left the heat factor out so the kids could eat it.
I was really surprised how good it was. 
And thanks to my fitness pal app this is the nutrition in a one cup serving..