clean eats

Hello Lovelies!

Today we are going to dive into this extremely simple recipe of Turkey with pesto sauce. You can pair this with salad, pasta, quinoa or anything else you want in your tummy. Today I will be putting our turkey on a bed of greens to make a simple yet filling salad.

Ingredients…
Pesto Sauce (you can make your own but I have store bought ones)
Turkey Cutlets (you can substitute it for whatever protein you like)
Mushroom (cut up)
Onions
Mayo (optional)
Salad/Pasta/Quinoa/Etc (whichever you prefer)

Step 1: You will need to prepare your turkey by doing a simple brine. Since turkey doesn’t really have fat, it’s really hard to keep the turkey moist without brining it first. Just have the turkey sit in a bowl of salt water for at least an hour if you didn’t have time to prepare it (makes a huge difference if its overnight though). You can pre-brine your meat as well and just have them in plastic baggies for whenever you are ready to use it. This will ensure that your turkey is nice and plumped with moisture.

Step 2: Place your cutlets in a small tray and spread the top with pesto sauce. If you want, you can mix a little bit of mayo with your pesto. This will help make your turkey even more moist. I used mayo on the left two and just plain pesto on the right two. Top it off with mushrooms and onions and you’re ready to plop it in the oven (350f for about 13min or until its cooked) **You can actually put the veggies on the bottom of the turkey. It only makes sense to place the protein on a bed of veggies but I’m not sure why I did it the other way around when I took the pictures -_-**

Step 3: While your turkey is baking you can prepare your pairing.

Step 4: Plate and you’re ready to chow. You can add some extra pesto sauce onto your pairing to add more flavor. You might have noticed that no additional salt is needed because when we brined the meat it somewhat marinated it and the pesto sauce has enough aroma and flavor that no extra sodium is needed.

I like to place hot protein on top of my salads mainly because I don’t feel satisfied if I am eating something that is cold. If you are someone that never feels satisfied after a salad then try heating up your protein and enjoying it that way. The other plus side to heating up your protein would be that you can probably even skip out on using a dressing because the juice/sauce from the meat will be enough to act as a substitute therefor cutting the extra fat/sodium/calories that comes with salad dressings.

Turkey isn’t the tastiest or most tender meat out there but it is the least fatty of them all which is why you would see that I try to use turkey meat whenever possible. I am still experimenting to see which way is the best in preparing it so that its more palatable. Make sure you don’t overcook your cutlet because when you do it becomes really tough.

Hope you enjoyed this and let me know if you have any healthy tasty recipe ideas you want to share!
❤ Jessica

Hello Lovelies!

Its been awhile since I’ve been on a healthy grind. I have just been telling myself I’ll start eating healthy tomorrow.. this will be the last ice cream.. last burger .. last.. well guess what.. no more last! So the first meal I have is pasta! I love pasta but traditional pasta has so much carbs and refined sugar so an alternative would be brown rice pasta. According to google, heres how they compare

Brown Rice Pasta VS Regular Pasta

Calories: 111 371 / 100g
Fat: 0.9g 1.5g
Carbs: 23g 75g
Sugar: 0.4g 2.7g

I’ve tried whole grain pasta and the texture of it is just not the same so I don’t feel satisfied but with the brown rice pasta (i have the Trader Joes brand) the texture of it is very very similar so its almost as if you’re eating regular pasta!

Ingredients: Ground Turkey, Brown Rice Pasta, some type of vegetable, tomato, kalamata olives, Mrs.Dash (Extra Spicy), and Garlic Salt.

Step 1: Season your ground turkey. Just add enough seasoning to cover you turkey meat and mix. The garlic salt is optional because the Mrs.Dash is enough to season it but if you want a little bit more flavor then the garlic salt really adds that extra flavor.

Step 2: Chop up your vegetables. You can add as many or as little as you want. I would normally go with onions and celery but since I didn’t have any at home I just grabbed any greens I could find. You can even add a medley of vegetables if you want!

Step 3: Heat up your pan with some oil then throw in your Turkey Meat. Once you see that its about 2/3 cooked you can add your vegetables in as well.

Step 4: While the Turkey is cooking, you can bring a pot of water to a boil and just cook the pasta like you normally would. Keep in mind though that the Brown Rice Pasta is not as sturdy to cook as regular pasta. So if you over cook it then it will be a lot softer than regular pasta. Keep an eye out for it and don’t let it over cook, if anything you can turn off your stove when its almost done but not quite and just let it sit for a little and eventually it will finish cooking itself in your pot while we whip up the sauce.

Step 5: Remove the Turkey from the stove once its done and now we can move on to the simplest sauce you will ever make. If you have fresh tomatoes at home then be my guest and chop up those tomatoes and use fresh ones but since I didn’t I opted for canned ones. Just look at the labels before you purchase and don’t get ones that has a ton of added sugars in it! Dump the tomatoes into the pan and let it heat up. I love olives so I add a lot more than needed but this just adds a really nice flavor to your sauce without adding any additional seasoning to it. Chop the olives up and plop them into your pan, stir it a little and Wa la! you’re done.

jessicaKAchan

sharing my beauty.food.fashion adventures

Healthy Eats: Pesto Turkey

Healthy Eats: Turkey Tomato Sauce Brown Rice Pasta