Easy Pasta Dinner
There are nights that I am just craving pasta, but I don’t want a red sauce like this sweet meat sauce. This ground turkey pasta is one of our family favorites and a recipe we’ve been making for years – ever since we discovered the magic of perciatelli noodles. If you’ve never had perciatelli noodles (or bucatini, which is very similiar), they’re one of our favorites because unlike spaghetti or linguine, they have a hole inside the noodle. And somehow that hole makes all the difference in soaking up the sauce. It’s truly magical and one of the best parts of this dish! You’ll love this recipe because it combines a handful of veggies with ground turkey (hello healthier pasta dish!) with a super easy to make sauce and it’s all done in under 30 minutes. Even picky eaters will like this one, especially when you pair it with a piece of toasted bread, these easy breadsticks, or these simple homemade drop biscuits brushed with garlic butter!
Ingredients
Ingredient Notes
Just a few quick notes on the ingredients:
Chicken broth – we typically use chicken bone broth but you can use bone broth, chicken broth, or chicken stock just finePasta – this recipe is best with perciatelli or bucatini but if you can’t find those for some reason, you can also do it with any long noodle pasta like spaghetti, it just won’t be quite as good Ground turkey – as long as it’s ground turkey breast, you’re good. It doesn’t matter if it’s 93% lean, 98% lean, or even 99% lean
Instructions
There are a few steps to make this recipe and honestly, it’s pretty hard to screw up. Those are my favorite kind!
1 – Prep ingredients
Before you get started, make sure all of your ingredients are washed, chopped, and ready to go. This recipe moves fast so you’ll want everything prepped beforehand! Bring a pot of salted water to boil then add your kale and boil for 3 minutes. Remove the kale using a slotted spoon or spider strainer (keep the water boiling – you’ll use it to cook the pasta later in the recipe) and place it in an ice bath to shock the kale and stop it from cooking. Strain the kale and slice into thin strips. This keeps the kale from getting too wilted when you add it to the pasta – and the texture of the kale adds a nice touch to this ground turkey pasta!
2 – Make the ground turkey pasta
Heat olive oil in a large pan over medium heat then cook the carrots and celery in the pan for about five minutes. Then add the garlic and cook for one more minute. Make sure you’re ready with the ground turkey before adding the garlic so you don’t burn it! Add the ground turkey in and cook for about six minutes or until the turkey is fully browned. Once the turkey is browned, add in your thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf and cook for one more minute. Add 1/2 cup broth to deglaze the pan, then add in the rest of the broth and kale then bring the sauce to a simmer. Simmer the sauce until it reduces in half. While the sauce is cooking, cook your pasta in the kale’s boiling water according to package instructions but do not strain. Add the cooked pasta directly to the sauce from the boiling water and mix to coat completely. Remove the bay leaf from the pasta. Then serve hot with parmesan cheese on top and crunchy toasted bread on the side.
Expert Tips
Scrape the sides of the pan when you add the broth to add even more flavor to the sauce. All those brown bits from cooking the veggies give the broth its flavor. Break up the ground turkey into small bites as you are browning it so they’re easy to eat in one bite with the pasta. Cut the veggies evenly so that they’ll cook evenly. If the carrots and celery are totally different sizes, you’ll end up with some cooked and some not quite so cooked when you’re ready to add the garlic. Wring out the kale with your hands to remove excess water. If it’s still wet at all, it will dilute the sauce when you add it to the pasta.
More Easy Pasta Recipes
Spinach and artichoke pastaRavioli with a creamy garlic butter sauceSweet spaghetti sauceGnocchi sorrentinaHomemade egg noodles
