I wish I liked the phrase “ground meat” as much as I like the dinners you can make with it. Ground turkey, chicken, beef, pork and other meats are the delicious and easy-to-prep foundation of meatballs, kebabs and burgers, a key element of countless sauces and curries. “Ground meat” isn’t super appetizing to me; a platter of nachos strewed with browned beef is.
This week’s newsletter is devoted to this ubiquitous but sometimes undersung ingredient, which is economical, convenient, easy to cook and hard to mess up.
I’m sorry to those of you who don’t eat meat! Usually you’ll find at least two meatless recipes here in the newsletter every week. Instead I’m going to send you to this collection of vegetarian sheet-pan recipes, and there’s a tip on using plant-based meat below. And do you get The Veggie, our weekly newsletter devoted to vegetarian recipes? If you don’t, sign up here; it’s free.
A few tips:
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Most kinds of ground meat can be used interchangeably (especially ground turkey and chicken), though you’ll probably detect a difference in flavor and texture. Nothing major. (Melissa Clark even wrote a recipe for meatballs using any kind of meat, and I love Tejal Rao’s flexible keema.)
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If you’re using ground turkey or chicken, use dark meat if you can, though don’t worry if you can’t. It’s harder to find but worth looking for; it has more flavor and is less prone to drying out.
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Don’t forget sausage, which is just ground pork, beef or other meat that’s been salted and highly seasoned — which is to say, highly flavorful with no extra work from you. It’s famously sold in links, which you can split open if you just need the meat itself, but I like to buy bulk (or loose) sausage, which is just the seasoned meat, no casings.
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Plant-based meats, from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, are their own thing. While you can often just swap them into recipes, you’ll get tastier results if you read this article that Kenji López-Alt wrote for us and follow his tips. (He also created recipes for vegan cheeseburgers, chili and Turkish kebabs.)
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It depends on what other ingredients are in them, but recipes made with ground meat tend to freeze and reheat well. (The meat itself, properly packaged, freezes perfectly.)
Thoughts? Requests? Email me at [email protected]. I love to hear from you.
I’m also making:
Porchetta pork roast; citrus salad with fennel and olives; sheet-pan pierogies with brussels sprouts and kimchi.
1. Fragrant Coconut Chicken and Sweet Potato
Kay Chun takes mildly flavored ground chicken to a better place by browning it with ginger, garlic and scallions, and then simmering it with sweet potato in coconut milk.
2. One-Pot Chicken Meatballs With Greens
How could we do a special edition of the newsletter and not include meatballs, one of the best foods ever created? This recipe from Yasmin Fahr is light, fresh and exceedingly elegant for the genre. (If meatballs are your thing, too, here’s an entire collection of recipes for you.)
3. Chili Mac
A kid pleaser from Ali Slagle, this easy classic combines macaroni and chili in a one-pot recipe with barely any chopping.
4. Stir-Fried Cabbage and Pork in Fish Sauce Butter
Another recipe from Kay, this stir-fry combines simple ingredients into something silky, spicy, bright and downright great.
5. Spicy Turkey Burgers
Commenters like Nina B. are already buzzing over this new recipe: “Always looking for a good turkey burger. This one’s now at top of my list.” Written by Andy Baraghani, the recipe has a secret ingredient that makes it juicy, and while it’s not super spicy you can leave out the cayenne if you like.
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View all recipes in your weekly plan.
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