Ground Turkey Lettuce Wraps & Egg Rolls

When our CSA gave us two heads of leafy green lettuce instead of the one we were expecting, I was wracking my head for something other than another salad.  Loosely based on the filling in this egg roll recipe and some suggestions from friends, I experimented with some lettuce wraps and ended up with a fun leftover treat!

Spicy Turkey Lettuce Wraps

I don’t remember exactly what went in here, but there was definitely the following:

• 1 pound ground turkey, browned and drained
• finely finely minced onions, carrots, red pepper, ginger
• a variety of spices, including red pepper, black pepper, and some other random add-ins
• 1 bunch sliced scallions
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 6-8 tb. rice vinegar
• 2-3 tb. sesame oil
• I may have added some veggie broth to give it some more liquid while it cooked and cooked and cooked down

Basically, everything just cooked together for a long long time. It smelled amazing and it turned out a bit too salty for Matt.  But wrapped together with some crispy mei fun noodles in big pieces of fresh lettuce, it was a wonderful and fun (and messy!) meal!

Since there was obviously no way we were going to eat an entire pound of ground turkey ourselves, the leftover meat went into a pyrex dish with the crispy noodles, which soaked up the yummy juices and the whole thing became a really wonderful filling for baked egg rolls!  With a package of egg roll wrappers, I made about 16 egg rolls that went into the freezer for later! 

While enjoying a lazy day on the couch and craving a snack one afternoon, Matt and I tried a couple to hold us over until dinner.  Yum!  With Matt’s honey soy sauce that he makes every time we make dumplings, they were spectacular.  We had them again the other night with some orange chicken from the freezer (not homemade at all!), and the flavors of the two dishes didn’t really work together, but the filling in the egg rolls is just the right texture and full of spice and pretty unique kick.  It could use some cabbage, but we just didn’t have any when I made them. 

I was extremely happy when I had all my egg rolls lined up on a baking sheet to freeze…I love love love using leftovers like this!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 7:58 am and is filed under Fun, Leftovers, Matthew, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.