Sweet and Spicy Turkey Lettuce Wraps

Winter in our home means comfort food.  It must be natures way of prepping us for the looooooong, cold months ahead!  But I actually really love cooking comfort food.  I love the whole process of it and I love eating it!  One of our comfort meals are tacos, complete with all the trimmings!

So when the Turkey Farmers of Canada challenged myself, along with some other Canadian bloggers, to make a comfort dish from turkey, I immediately thought of tacos.  But I wanted to make a more healthy and modern version of them!  I started thinking about what to make, and my mind turned to the Lettuce Wraps at Joey Tomatoes.  Have you ever had them?  They’re the BEST.  So, so good.  And I’ve always wanted to try to make them at home, so this was the perfect time to do that!  I just knew that they’d be SO good with ground turkey!  So I took to the internet in search of the perfect recipe for lettuce wraps, and after a bit of trial and error, this recipe is what I came up with!

These are so flavourful!  And messy.  Very messy.  Did I mention they’re messy?!  But they’re worth it.  The kids loved them, and thought they were so fun to eat.

Sweet & Spicy Turkey Lettuce Wraps

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• Author: Jo-Anna Rooney
• Yield: 6 1x

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Ingredients

Sauce

• 3/4 cup Hoisin sauce
• 1 1/2 tsp rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp liquid honey
• 3 tbsp sweet chili sauce
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 1 large clove garlic, minced
• 1 tsp freshly grated ginger

Meat Mixture

• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 1/2 lbs ground turkey
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp brown sugar
• 1 red pepper, chopped
• 1 orange pepper, chopped
• 1 small onion, chopped

Toppings

• handful cilantro
• 3 green onions, sliced
• 1 head iceberg lettuce (separated into whole leaves)
• 1/2 cup chopped peanuts (toasted if you like)
• dry steam-fried Asian noodles

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Instructions

Make the sauce first.

1. In a sauce pan, combine the Hoisin sauce, rice vinegar, honey, sweet chili sauce, water, lime juice, sesame oil, garlic and ginger. Stir and cook until well blended, then remove from the heat and set aside.

Cooking the turkey.

1. In a frying pan, heat up 2 tbsp of oil, and add the turkey and garlic.
2. Cook until the meat is no longer pink and the moisture is gone (you may have to drain it).
3. Mix together the soy sauce and brown sugar in a little bowl, then add it to the ground turkey. Stir and cook for about 2 minutes.
4. Add the Hoisin sauce mixture that you had set aside, along with the bell peppers and onion. Stir and cook for about 3-4 minutes, or until the vegetables are cooked but still kind of crunchy.

Putting it all together.

1. All in separate bowls: Set out the lettuce leaves, turkey mixture, peanuts, chopped cilantro, sliced onions and noodles.
2. Let everyone put together their own wrap!
3. Enjoy!

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Notes

One thing we found was that the noodles were a bit too crunchy for our liking. They could be tossed into the final meat mixture and have them sit for a few minutes before serving, just to soften them up a bit.

So for your next taco night, think of these turkey lettuce wraps!  They’re so good!   Don’t just wait for the holidays to serve turkey – it’s so lean and very versatile!  Really really good!