My friend Judy gave me this fabulous turkey chili recipe that I regularly make with great success. The recipe is so good that I have passed it on to others who have found it similarly yummy (perhaps the greatest success was my friend Jeff then enabling our friend Carey as well). The base meat is ground turkey, which I usually find at Trader Joe's in the meat section. The other day Caroline and I went to TJ's to restock for the start of the school year, and I decided to grab 1 lb of ground turkey so I could make a nice batch of chili and then leave it in the fridge for easy dinners for the rest of the week.
Fast forward to last night, when I actually made the chili. The first step is to saute up the onions and garlic, then add the meat and cook all the way through. Ground beef, turkey, lamb and ostrich all cook down nicely to those perfect little tiny meat globules that one wants in a sloppy joe, bobotie, shepherd's pie and chili consistency. The joy of dishes such as these is that all the flavors are pleasantly balanced and present in your mouth whilst eating. As I am cooking the meat, I discover that it is not separating nicely but rather is cooking into solid chunks of white meat. Cooked ground turkey is a darker color, so I rather quickly suss out that I am in fact making a ground CHICKEN chili instead. Dammit! The end result was ok, but the flavor was not as complex and the stupid chunks of ground chicken add a slightly off texture to the chili.
I don't understand why Trader Joe's stocks the ground chicken next to the ground turkey, as the uncooked meat is the same color but the end result is very different. Additionally, who the hell uses ground chicken in the first place? The only possible use I could come up with is chicken burgers, which can be purchased pre-made from Trader Joe's in a delicious chili lime flavor that are far superior to any hand shaped varieties. So thanks a lot, Trader Joe's, for ruining Judy's chili recipe. I'll think twice before acquiring any ground poultry from you.
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