Crispy Asian Wild Turkey Bowl

In the early days of spring when it’s unclear whether I should wear my thickest winter jacket or a thin hoodie in the morning, the return of the sun and green grass reminds me how much I like vegetables. After a winter of eating mostly potatoes and canned or frozen food, I crave something fresh. Fortunately, the garden is a willing partner and we can usually get a tiny vegetable harvest by early spring. If I time fall plantings right and cover brassicas with thick covers over the winter, I can have a little cabbage ready by the time Clay or the kids bring home an Arkansas turkey.  This is a great recipe that capitalizes on the spring harvests from the garden and from the woods.  

Ingredients

There are four parts to this recipe, the rice, the vegetables, the meat, and the marinade. It can seem like a lot. But if you pull in someone to chop up the ingredients and make the marinade, it’s actually pretty simple. Feel free to modify these ingredients.

Vegetables

• 1 head of cabbage (purple and green combined add pretty color)
• 1 red bell pepper, julienned
• 4-5 radishes, thinly sliced
• 4-5 carrots, shredded
• 1-2 fresh jalapenos
• A bunch of Cilantro
• Green onions
• Raw sugar snap or snow peas
• 2-4 cups brown rice, fully cooked

Sauce

• ½ cup sesame oil 
• ½ cup avocado oil or other neutral vegetable oil
• ½  cup Mirin or rice vinegar
• ½  cup Braggs liquid Aminos or soy sauce
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 inch fresh grated ginger
• 1 t red pepper flakes
• ½ t salt

Meat

• 1-2 Turkey Breasts with tenderloin removed or 2-4 Chicken Breasts
• Panko crumbs
• 1-2 T sesame seeds
• 1 t salt
• 1 t ground ginger
• 1 t cayenne pepper (less if you don’t like heat)
• 1/2 – 1 cup flour for dredging
• 2 eggs
• 2T  Mirin or rice vinegar
• 2T Bragg’s liquid Aminos or soy sauce

Steps

1. Cook the brown rice.
2. Make the sauce.
   1. Add the grated ginger, minced garlic, red pepper flakes and salt to a mason jar or other glass container with a lid. 
   2. Add the wet ingredients for the dressing (½ c. sesame oil, mirin, and Braggs). Put the lid on and shake it up. Set aside (can be prepared a day before).
3. Prepare the veggies.
   1. Chop up all the vegetables
   2. Heat a small amount of neutral oil in a large pan. 
   3. Pour the sauce over it (reserve a little if you want to pour some over the finished product)
   4. Cook until soft
4. Prepare the meat
   1. Beat the turkey well with a meat mallet. 
   2. Get 3 plates ready for breading your meat: a flour dish, a bowl for the egg wash, and a dish for the panko crumbs.
   3. Mix flour, ground ginger, salt, and cayenne pepper in your flour plate.
   4. Mix egg, Mirin, and Braggs to make the egg wash
   5. Mix panko crumbs, sesame seeds, and 1 t salt
   6. Take your beaten turkey breast and pat dry with a paper towel or tea towel. 
   7. Dredge each turkey breast in flour. Dip it in egg wash. Roll it in the panko crumbs.
   8. Heat oil with a high smoke point (I use peanut oil) to about 350 degrees. 
   9. Fry it for about 3-5 minutes or until cooked through. 
   10. Slice it in strips
5. Serve it up by layering brown rice, then veggies, then meat. I like to reserve a little of the unused sauce to pour on top.

Notes

Cooking

This is a great recipe to pull in helpers. It’s a lot to do alone but if one person can handle the meat and one person can take on the veggies, it finishes up in a flash.

Time Management

The tasks associated with this recipe can easily be chunked into three sections: the dressing, the meat, and all the veggie chopping.  Make the dressing any time (even several days ahead). Focus on the meat first and then while that’s cooking chop the veggies or assign veggie chopping to someone else. 

We have a weekly meal prep routine on Sundays that helps us lower the weeknight load. We cut veggies, thaw and/or brown meat, and make dressings or marinades on Sunday to lighten the weekday workload. There are a lot of tasks in this recipe that could be done on a prep day. By preparing veggies, brown rice, and sauce in advance, this could be a simple weeknight recipe.

Substitutions

When I’m cooking for people with lower caloric needs than teenagers, I’ll omit the brown rice, skip cooking the vegetables, and serve this as a very crunchy salad instead.