Turkey Chili-adillo

This week’s recipe is a hearty turkey and white bean stew like dish that is between a white chili and a picadillo. I like to make this on cold days and serve it with corn chips and sour cream or with cornbread waffles.

The other note about this recipe is that it is quick (even if the turkey is frozen), the whole thing takes about twenty minutes to make. As usual, I have had a pretty busy week with a big catering event, and after that event I got home and realized, not only do I not have anything defrosted, I haven’t gone grocery shopping in two weeks! So I dig through the freezer and find a package of ground turkey that is frozen solid. Then I rummage through the pantry and find my last can of white beans. I have made this dish, or a variation of it, whenever it begins to get cold. I usually make cornbread waffles to accompany it, but today I didn’t have milk or eggs.

You’re probably thinking about cooking your meat from frozen, which is totally safe. Safer actually than defrosting it in the microwave or under running water. When you cook meat from frozen, you completely skip the temperature danger zone (40-140 degrees Fahrenheit). Another protein that is better when cooked from frozen is steaks. Really most proteins work fairly well cooked from frozen.

Here is what you need to make this Chili-adillo:

1.5-2.5 lbs of ground turkey

1 can of white beans (I use great white northers)

1 white/ yellow onion

1 cup or 8 green chiles roasted, peeled, and chopped

1 quart of chicken stock (I only use about half or 16 ounces)

2 tsp of ground cumin

1 Tbps canola oil

Salt and Pepper

Serve with corn chips, cheddar cheese, sour cream, or cornbread

The first step is to chop an onion

Secondly, you add oil to the pan and wait for it to heat

Then you add the onions to the pan

Cook the onions about 5 minutes until translucent

Add the hatch chiles

Push the onion-chile mixture to form a ring outside the pan and add the frozen turkey

Add the chicken stock

Let it simmer. As the meat defrosts and cooks, I usually use my spatula to scrape off meat. This is the trick to making this dish in less than half an hour